173 IVriglit &c. on an Universal Measure '^ 



tries. For, as our Royal Society, M. Huygens and Moim- 

 tonus have proposed, after Sir Christopher IFren, this ho- 

 rary foot, or tripcdal length, which vibrateth seconds, will 

 fit all ages and places. But then respect must be had to the 

 centre of oscillation, which you have an account of in 

 M. Huygens' s aforesaid book De Horol. Osc'dl." — " pub- 

 lished at Paris 1673*." Now Wilkins, Sprat, and Dev" 

 ham, (who wrote his " Artificial Clock-maker in his juve- 

 nile years t") were cotemporaries of Hui/gcns, Wren, and 

 MoutQUy and appear to be very impartial, dispassionate 

 writers. Their testimonies, therefore, added to the date of 

 Wdkins's book, establish, beyond all doubt, IVren's rrghl 

 to he remembered, as the first proposer of the pendulum for 

 an iiniuersai standard. Huygens' s discoveries on the pen- 

 dulum, were numerous and important; but as&uredly this 

 was not one of them. The truth is, that that justly distin- 

 gui^hed Hollander and his cotemporaries, especially in this 

 coimtry, (which, according to LeibiiilzX, then enjoyed its 

 Augustan age,) made so many discoveries about the same 

 time, and often on the same subjects, that their claims are 

 apt to be confounded, when, as in this case, tlicy are per- 

 fectly distinct. 



But, as we must not love our countrymen and their fame 

 better than truth, I think it my duty to add, for the in- 

 formation of persons unacquainted with the history of the 

 mathematics, that IVilkins, who, in the foregoing extract, 

 recommends the decimal division of weights and measures, 

 was by no means the first who made this most wise and 

 important proposition. John ISlidler, connnonly called 

 Regiomontanus, or rather his master Purhadi, actually in- 

 troduced that division of the integer when they transformed 

 the tables of Sines from the sexagesimal to the decimal scale 

 about the middle of the fifteenth centurv : so far is this ar- 

 rangement from being reconnuended by novelty to those 

 light ninds who make this the god of tlieir idolatry ! These 

 ingenious German mathematicians were followed, at a con- 

 siderable intena! of ye:iTS, by our no less ingenious, but 

 now forgotten, countrymen, Buckley and Recorde ', and 

 afterwards by the famous French philosopher Ramus, Bu,t 

 Simon Stevin, master of mathematics to the renowned 

 prince jUflttrkv of Nassau, and inspector of the dykes of 

 Holland, was the first European who generally applied dc- 



• Artif. Clock-m^ker, pp. ro^. 114. edit. 4. printed in 1759. 

 t Prt'tacc to tlic 3d and 4.th editions. 



+ f^i/. a M. I'Ab'H. Caiiii, k Ke.ua I de Fu'.:cs, sur la Pbitos. fit. 

 toai, ii. p. jU. edit. 2. 



cimak 



