833 



WRIGHT, EDWARD. 



WRIGHT, JOSEPH. 



834 



was also secretary to the Earl of Clarendon, and afterwards to the 

 Duke of York. He died in 1672. Matthew Wren was the author of 

 'Considerations on Mr. Harrington's Commonwealth of Oceana, re- 

 strained to the first Part of the Preliminaries,' 8vo, London, 1757, 

 published anonymously ; ' Monarchy asserted, or the State of Monar- 

 chical and Popular Government, in Vindication of the Considerations 

 upon Mr. Harrington's Oceaua,' 8vo, Oxford, 1659; 8vo, London, 

 1660 ; ' On the Origin and Progress of the Revolutions in England,' in 

 Gutch's ' Collectanea Curiosa,' vol. i. 1781. 



WRIGHT, EDWARD, a mathematician, the account of whose life 

 and writings is generally so loosely given that it will be worth while 

 to devote a little more space to him than his celebrity would otherwise 

 demand. He was born at Garveston in Norfolk, but the date is not 

 known. He was educated at Caius College, Cambridge, of which he 

 became a fellow. Dr. Huttou (in the preface to bis logarithms) quotes 

 a translation of what he calls " a Latin piece taken out of the annals 

 of Caius College, Cambridge," in which it is stated that Wright had 

 great mechanical knowledge, and was most expert in the making of 

 instruments, that he was the first inventor of the plan of bringing 

 water from Ware to London (in what is now called the New River), 

 but that he was prevented by trickery from bringing his plan into 

 action. It is also stated by Sherburne, who gives some account of 

 him in the list at the end of the translation of Manilius, that Wright 

 was mechanical tutor to Prince Henry, son of James I., and that for 

 this prince he caused to be made in Germany a sphere which not only 

 showed the motions of the solar system, but would suffice to foretell 

 eclipses for 17,100 years. This sphere was damaged in the civil 

 troubles, but was recovered and repaired by Sir Jonas Moore in 1646, 

 and Sherburne, who published in 1675, says that it was then at Sir 

 Jonas Moore's official residence in the Tower. But Wright's fame 

 rests entirely upon his discovery of the mode of constructing the sea- 

 chart which is nov in universal use under the name of Mercator's 

 Projection. When sea-charts were first made, the degrees of latitude 

 were made of equal length ; in fact the chart was nothing more than 

 a map in which degrees of latitude and longitude were represented 

 by equal parts throughout. On such a chart attempts were made to 

 navigate by following the course marked out by a line on the map 

 joining the port of departure with that of destination, and the error 

 was considerable. Mercator [MERCATOR, GEUARD] saw enough of the 

 source of this error to kuow that the degrees of latitude ought to 

 increase in length ; and this might have been easily found out on a 

 common globe, by transferring to the globe the straight line of the 

 common chart, and comparing it with a rumb line approximately 

 traced out. Mercator accordingly constructed rough charts (probably 

 by transferring rumb lines from the globe to the chart, making them 

 straight in the latter), in which the degrees of latitude increase, and in 

 something like the proper manner : but there is not the slightest 

 reason to suppose that be had the least idea of doing more than this, 

 or that he had investigated the mathematical problem of eo laying 

 down the sphere on a plane as that the rumb lines should be 

 straightened. But it is absurd, as some writers have done, to assert 

 that Mercator borrowed his idea from Wright, since the maps of the 

 former were published perhaps before the birth of the latter, cer- 

 tainly thirty years before he published anything on navigation. And 

 Wright himself, mentioning Mercator, says, exactly as might have 

 been expected, "By occasion of that mappe of Mercator, I first 

 thought of correcting so many and grosse errors, &c." All that could 

 have been learned by Mercator's hint, Wright did learn : it must first 

 be shown to be likely that the former had a rule before it can be 

 suspected that the latter copied it. 



To instruct himself in practical navigation, Wright went to sea in 

 1589, on a voyage to the Azores, with George, earl of Cumberland, a 

 dispensation from residence in college having been granted from the 

 queen. Navigation had not been long flourishing in Britain : a few 

 years before Wright, many captains " mocked them that used charts 

 or cross-staves, saying they cared nothing for their sheep skinnes, 

 they could keep a better account upon a boord; and them that 

 observed sunne or starres for finding the latitude, they would call 

 sun-shooters and star-shooters, and ask if they had hit it." In this 

 voyage Wright made many observations, and perhaps thought of this 

 method of drawing the chart. Nothing of this however was pub- 

 lished until 1594, when Blundevil, in the second edition of his 

 ' Exercises,' gave the mode of constructing the chart and the following 

 account of it : " Mercator hath, in his universal! card or map, made 

 the spaces of the parallels of latitude to be wider every one than 

 another from the equinoctiall towards either of the poles, by what rule 

 I know not, unlesse it be by such a table as my friend Master Wright, 

 of Caius College, in Cambridge, at my request, sent me (I thanke him) 

 not long since, for that purpose, which table, with his consent, I have 

 here plainely set downe, together with the use thereof." Then follows 

 a rough table for the length of degrees only, and apparently not made 

 from a very accurate table of secants. In 1599 Wright published his 

 'Certaine Errors in Navigation detected and corrected,' in which he 

 explains at great length the theory of his chart, and gives what he calls 

 his ' table of latitudes,' to minutes, being exactly what has since been 

 called a table of meridional parts. He also treats on the compass and 

 the cross-staff, and gives an account of his solar obser,yajtip,ns, and a 

 corrected solar, theory,.., In, the^econd edition, published,,ina6^Q,!lw 



BIOG. DIV. VOL. VI. 



gives a full answer to some objections raised by Stevinus. The third ' 

 edition is of 1657, edited by Joseph Moxon. 



In looking at the manner in which Wright announced and used the 

 remarkable discovery which is permanently connected with his name, 

 and comparing it with the impression derived from the manner in 

 which his successors have frequently represented that discovery, it 

 seems to us as if he had hardly received his due share of credit. He 

 had a full and geometrical power over his subject ; nothing but the 

 differential calculus could have given him more. He knew well that 

 the infinitely small increments of the meridian must be inversely as the 

 cosines of the latitudes, and thence formed his celebrated table by the 

 sums of the secants, expressing that it would be made more exact 

 the smaller the interval of the angles of those secants is made. Had 

 those who have written about them studied his work, the " geometri- 

 cal conceit "which he gives for dividing the meridian would have 

 become a common and well-known illustration, and would have ap- 

 peared in collections of examples, examination papers, &c. We quote 

 it, as showing completely that there was nothing empirical about his 

 table. " Let the meridian roule upon a streight line beginning at the 

 sequinoctial, the globe swelling in the meane time in such sort that 

 the semidiameter thereof may be alwaies aequal to the secans of the 

 angle, or arch conteined betweene the sequinoctial and semidiameter 

 insisting at right angles upon the foresaid streight line : The degrees, 

 minutes, seconds, &c. of the meridia, noted in the atreight line, as they 

 come to touch tho same, are the divisions of the meridian in the 

 nautical planispheere. And this conceit of the meridian of the nautical 

 planisphaere may satisfie the curious exactnes of the geometrician; but 

 for mechanical use, the table before mentioned (which heere now fol- 

 loweth) may suffice." The result of the integral calculus, namely, that 

 the sums of the secants in Wright's table are ultimately proportional 

 to the logarithmic cotangents of the semi-complements of the latitudes, 

 was first announced by Henry Bond in Norwood's 'Epitome' (1645), 

 and more fully in his (Bond's) edition of Gunter, 1653. It was first 

 demonstrated by James Gregory, in his ' Exercitationes Geometricse,' 

 1668, and afterwards by Halley. ('Phil. Trans.,' 1695: see also 

 ' Miscellanea Curiosa.') 



When the invention of logarithms became public, Wright imme- 

 diately applied himself to the study of the new method, and translated 

 Napier's description of his canon. This translation was forwarded to 

 Napier at Edinburgh, received his approbation and a few lines of 

 addition, and was returned for publication. But Wright died soon 

 after he received it back (in 1615, as appears by the college manu- 

 script, and therefore not in 1618 nor 1620, nor 1624, as asserted by 

 various writers), and it was published in 1616 by his son, Samuel 

 Wright, also of Caius College, with a dedication to the East India 

 Company, which had for some time allowed the father an annuity of 

 50?., in consideration of his delivering a yearly lecture on navigation. 



Wright left other works in manuscript on the use of the sphere, on 

 dialling, and on navigation, called " the haven-finding art : " so says 

 Sherburne. But Wilson, who wrote the history of navigation attached 

 to Robertson's work on that subject, and who is a respectable autho- 

 rity, says that this haven-finding art, which was a translation of 

 Stevinus's 'Portuum Investigandorum Ratio,' printed in Latin by 

 Grotius with the above title in 1599, was printed in the same year, in 

 English, by Wright, and was afterwards attached to the third edition 

 of the ' Errors Detected.' There is in the Royal Society's Library an 

 imperfect copy, without date, of one Edward Wright's ' Description 

 and Use of the Sphsere,' &c. 



WRIGHT, JOSEPH, commonly called ' Wright of Derby,' where 

 he was born in 1734 : his father was an attorney of Derby. Wright 

 came to London in 1751, and placed himself with Hudson the 

 portrait-painter, who was the master also of Reynolds and Mortimer. 

 In 1773 he married, and soon afterwards set out for Italy, where he 

 remained, chiefly in Rome, for two years. After his return to England 

 in 1775 he resided two years at Bath ; he then settled at Derby, where 

 he remained until his death in 1797. Wright was a painter of great 

 ability ; he drew and coloured well, both in figures and landscape. He 

 practised for many years as a portrait-painter, but painted at the same 

 time also a few historical or figure-pieces, in some of which he repre- 

 sented the effect of fire-light, a style of work he always had a taste 

 for, which was much strengthened by a great eruption of Mount Vesu- 

 vius which he witnessed during his stay in Italy ; and his pictures in 

 this style are the best of any which were produced in his own time in 

 England. 



In 1782 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy, but being 

 offended at Mr. Garvey's being chosen an academician before him, he 

 resigned his diploma in disgust; he continued however occasionally to 

 send his works to the Academy exhibitions. In 1785 he made an exhi- 

 bition of his own in a large room in the Piazza of Covent Garden, when 

 he exhibited in all twenty-four pictures, among which were several illus- 

 trating the effects of fire-light, the best of which was the destruction 

 of the floating batteries off Gibraltar. He in the latter years of his 

 life painted chiefly landscapes ; and his last work, a large view of the 

 head of Ullswater in Westmoreland, is spoken of as a picture of great 

 merit. The following pictures are mentioned as Wright's best histo- 

 rical pieces : ' The Dead Soldier,' ' Edwin at the Tomb of his Ances- 

 .'reas.V.'B 6 !: and Leander,' the ' Lady in Coi&iusj* 

 Scene in, the Winter's Tale,' painted for Alderman 



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