Air-Pump in England. 333 



in Pepy's Diary.* Between them, however, they could not 

 succeed in fashioning a serviceable machine, and Boyle had 

 recourse, some time in the year 1658 (O.S.), to the celebrated 

 Robert Hooke, then a youth of some three-and- twenty, but 

 already remarkable for his great mechanical genius. No 

 drawing of Greatrex's contrivance has come down to us, but 

 Hooke, who had seen it, says in his cutting way, that it *' was 

 too gross to perform any great matter." 



Greatrex's contrivance having been thrown aside, Hooke 

 constructed for Boyle tlie air-pump, with which his first series 

 of pneumatic researches was made. It appears to have been 

 commenced in 1658, and finished early in 1659. Boyle''s ac- 

 count of it is contained in his treatise entitled " New Expe- 

 riments Physico-Mechanical, touching the Spring and Weight 

 of the Air, and its eff^ects ; made for the most part in a new 

 Pneumatical Engine ; written, by way of letter, to the Right 

 Honourable Charles Lord Viscount of Dungarvan, eldest son 

 of the Earl of Corke." The date of this letter, which, when 

 published in 1660, formed a volume, is 1659, whith may be 

 considered as the certain date of the first English air-pump. 

 The merit of constructing it should seem to be almost entirely 

 Hooke's. Boyle at least claims very little for himself In 

 the introduction to his treatise, he mentions that he put both 

 Mr G. (Greatrex) and R. Hooke to contrive an air-pump 

 which should be more manageable than the German one, and 

 free from its defects ; and then adds, " After an unsuccessful 

 trial or two of ways proposed by others, the last-named per- 

 son (Hooke) fitted me with a pump anon to be described. "f 

 In a manuscript published by Waller, after Hooke's death, 

 the latter says, " In 1658 or 9 I contrived and perfected the 

 air-pump for Mr Boyle."J Boyle, however, had certainly 



* He was a man of note in his day, but has his name cpelled in so many 

 ways, that his individuality i^ perilled by the number of surnames attributed 

 to him. Hooke calls him Gratorix ; Waller s Life of Jlooke, p. iii. Birch 

 names him Greatericks and Greatoricks ; Hutory of Royal Societj/, vol. 1., 

 pp. 33, 45, and 50. Aubrey styles him Ralph Greatrex ; Lttters, dc, «£*c., of 

 Eminent Men of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, vol. ii. partii., p. 476, 

 I have adopted Aubrey's spelling, simply as the shortest. 



t liiich's Boyle, vol. i., p. 7. 



* Wallers Jiil'e of Hooke, p. iii. 



