Hi,
Has your friend contacted the Whipple Museum in Cambridge? They have a
collection of slide rules and other calculating devices.
 
Graeme

Caudwell's Mill Trust, Arkwright Society, Derbyshire Archaeological Society,
Moulton bicycles, Heage windmill, SPAB Mills Section, Cromford Canal, IA, water
& wind power, slide rules & Risc OS computing are all interests of Graeme
Walker.
Robotics information can be found at http://www.shadowrobot.com

--- On Thu, 9/7/09, (Robert) Bruce Sandie <sandierb@...> wrote:


From: (Robert) Bruce Sandie <sandierb@...>
Subject: SR Information wanted about an old slide rule
To: sliderule@yahoogroups.com
Date: Thursday, 9 July, 2009, 6:02 AM


A friend of mine, Prof. Rod Home, is seeking information about an 18th C special
purpose slide rule, as outlined in the following message. Can anyone help? The
message makes an interesting read in itself.
Bruce Sandie

"I have a query that has been bugging me for a long time. It occurs to me that
you or someone in your circle of slide rule enthusiasts may be able to help.

With colleagues in Portugal, I'm preparing an edition of the fascinating
surviving correspondence of the 18th-century Portuguese physicist Joćo Jacinto
Magalhćes (Jean Hyacinthe de Magellan) (1722-1790). Magellan spent most of the
last thirty years of his life in London. His  letters include a great deal of
information about the late 18th-century scientific instrument trade, of which
London was the primary hub.

In a letter from London to Johann III Bernoulli in Berlin dated 28 January 1772,
Magellan included the text of an obituary of the recently deceased astronomer Dr
John Bevis FRS, written by Bevis's friend James Horsfall FRS. (Bernoulli
subsequently published a French translation of this.) In it, Horsfall wrote,
inter alia: "The only thing that appears under his name is his Satellite Sliding
rule for finding ye imers. & Emersions of Jupr. 4 Satellites ...".

Horsfall was clearly talking here about separately published works, since Bevis
published many papers in the Gentleman's Magazine, the Royal Society of London's
Philosophical Transactions, and elsewhere. I'd like to give a reference in our
edition to this "satellite sliding rule" publication - my impression is that
it's a pamphlet of some kind - but I haven't managed to track down a copy. The
late Ruth Wallis referred to it in an article on Bevis that she published a few
years ago in "Notes & Records of the Royal Society" and also in a typescript
bibliography of Bevis's publications that she deposited at the Royal Society,
but she indicated in both places that she hadn't succeeded in locating a copy;
her only source of information about it was Horsfall's obituary as published by
Bernoulli. I've consulted both Peter Hingley, the librarian at the Royal
Astronomical Society in London, and the well-known historian of the 18th-century
scientific instrument
trade, Anita McConnell, who is a friend of mine, and
neither of them has been able to track it down. But it occurs to me that
slide-rule specialists such as yourself might have come across it. Does it ring
any bells with you? Or with your slide-rule collector friends? Any suggestions
you might have would be warmly welcomed and suitably acknowledged".

R. W. Home
Emeritus Professor of History and Philosophy of Science
University of Melbourne







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