PROGRESS OF MATHEMATICS AND MECHANICS 237 



are slack to any never so great commodity, if there hang of it any pain- 

 ful) study or travelsome labour. 



The book itself is in the form of a dialogue or catechism be- 

 ginning : 



The Scholar speaketh. 



' Sir, such is your authority in mine estimation, that I am content 

 to consent to your saying, and to receive it as truth, though I see 

 none other reason that doth lead me thereunto ; whereas else in mine 

 own conceit it appeareth but vain, to bestow any time privately in 

 learning of that thing that every Child may and doth learn at all times 

 and hours, when he doth any thing himself alone, and much more when 

 he talketh or reasoneth with others.' 



He employs the symbol + " whyche betokeneth too muche, as 

 this line plaine without a crosse line betokeneth too little." 



In 1557 he published an algebra under the alluring title " Whet- 

 stone of Witte," using the sign = for equality, which he says he 

 selected because "noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle" than 

 two parallel straight lines. 



ALGEBRAIC EQUATIONS OF HIGHER DEGREE. Two great Ital- 

 ian mathematicians vied with each other in giving a powerful im- 

 petus to the development of algebra in the sixteenth century. 



Niccolo Fontana or TARTAGLIA (1500-1557) a man of the hum- 

 blest origin, lectured at Verona and Venice, and first won fame 

 by successfully meeting a challenge to solve mathematical prob- 

 lems, all of which proved, as he had anticipated, to involve cubic 

 equations. 



His Nova Scienza (1537) discusses falling bodies, and many 

 problems of military engineering and fortification, the range 

 of projectiles, the raising of sunken galleys, etc. 



The title-page is chiefly occupied by a large plate, which represents 

 the courts of Philosophy, to which Euclid is doorkeeper, Aristotle and 

 Plato being masters of an inmost court, in which Philosophy sits 

 throned, Plato declaring by a label that he will let nobody in who does 

 not understand Geometry. In the great court there is a cannon being 

 fired, all the sciences looking on in a crowd such as Arithmetic, 



