Lot 35
Simpson, Thomas
Essays on several Curious and Useful Subjects, in Speculative and Mix'd Mathematicks
The Library of James Stirling, Mathematician
Auction: 23 October 2025 from 13:00 GMT
Description
Illustrated by a Variety of Examples. London: by H. Woodfall, jun., for J. Nourse, 1740. First edition, 4to in half-sheets (22.6 x 17.8cm), contemporary sprinkled calf, coronet devices gilt to spine-compartments, red morocco label to second, red sprinkled edges, viii 142 [2] pp., title-pages printed in red and black, woodcut head-and tailpieces and initials, diagrams throughout text, errata leaf to rear with advertisements verso, a few sections of skinning to covers, final page and errata leaf marked [Wallis 150.3]
Footnote
'The first application of the Newton-Raphson process to the solution of transcendental equations’ (Cajori, History of Mathematics, 1919, p. 227). The work contains thirteen papers, of which the second ‘treats of the motion of bodies affected by projectile and centripetal forces, wherein the invention of orbits and the motion of apsides, with many others of the most considerable matters in the first book of Sir Isaac Newton’s Principia, are fully and clearly investigated' (Simpson's preface, p. vi).