110 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



[March 1, 1889. 



existence, were to be examined by some shorthand experts, 

 they might throw a light upon the Newton-Flamsteed con- 

 troversy. — Yours, &c., 



Edward Pocknell, 

 Past President of the Shorthand Society. 

 04 Imperial Buildings, Ludgate Circus, 

 Loudon, E.G. 



The following letter, not wi-itten for publication, will be 

 read with interest in connection with the above and the 

 review of Abraham Sharp's life : — 



" Dear Sir, — ^Referring to our conversation of yesterday 

 respecting the system of shorthand used by Abraham Sharp, 

 I find from my notes that the ' Sharp ' with whom Byrom 

 studied an uncouth system of shorthand then in vogue was 

 ' Tom Sharp ' (as he was familiarly called), afterwards a 

 D.D. and Archdeacon of Northumberland. This person 

 was a son of Archbishop Sharp, and father of the well- 

 known Granville Sharp. On Abraham Sharp's monument 

 he is stated to be a relative of the archbishop. Both were 

 born in the same ^"illage. Possibly one of the old books on 

 shorthand getting into Little Horton had become known to 

 both of the Sharp families, and, if so, the system is probably 

 that which set Byrom's wits to work to ftishion a better 

 and more rational one. 



" When Chalmers wrote his ' Biographical Dictionary ' he 

 gave an interesting account of Abraham Sharp, and stated 

 that a chest full of letters remained in possession of his 

 relatives — his correspondence with Flamsteed, Newton, 

 Halley, Wallis, and other scientific men of the day — and 

 that on the letteis his answers to his friends had been care- 

 fully copied in shorthand. 



" I have a specimen of Sharp's shorthand writing on a 

 letter dated June 1705, and I have attacked the neatly 

 written but uncanny-looking signs, with the result that in 

 three hours last night I mastered the alphabet and most of 

 the symbols. In time I shall penetrate the whole mystery. 

 At all events, I can now read two-thirds of the shorthand 

 letter and accompanying notes. The main system of short- 

 hand used by Sharp was one of which very little is known, 

 but it evidently contains grafts from other systems, and 

 spurts of the writer'.s own fancies have made it complex. 

 Like all these old riddles, the solution must come at last to 

 an expert. 



" Correspondence with men like Newton and Flamsteed 

 would contain a good many scientific phrases, but that 

 would be no bar to decipherment. 



" I will endeavour to make a complete translation of the 

 letter and notes in the course of a few days. But in the 

 meantime you will be justified in saying ' the nut is 

 cracked.' — Yours faithfully, John Westby-Gibson. 



" February 22, 1889." 



^otitts of 9D00fe5. 



Life and Correspondence of Abraham Sharp. By William 

 Cudworth. (Sampson Low & Co., 1889.) — The thanks of 

 all who are interested in the history of astronomy are due to 

 Mr. Cudworth for the publication of this handsomely printed 

 and illustrated volume upon which he has evidently bestowed 

 much care and the labour of many years, and in which he 

 has collected a vast amount of matter bearing on the piivate 

 life and habits of a too little known astronomer and mechani- 

 cian, whose assistance contributed greatly to the success of 

 Flamsteed's work at the Greenwich Observatory. 



Abraham Sharp was born in 1653. He was the youngest 

 but one of the ten children of John Sharp, the Parliamen- 



tarian, who fought under General Fairfax during the civil 

 war and acted as his secretary during the western campaign. 

 Abraham Sharp was born at a time when Oliver Cromwell 

 was practically king of England. The town of Bradford, 

 near to which the Sharp family had lived for generations, 

 had sustained two sieges, and its defenders had been worsted 

 by the Royalist forces. The town was then one of the chief 

 centres for the manufacture of woollen cloth, and Abraham's 

 father, .John Sharp, combined the occupation of a cloth ma- 

 nufacturer with that of farming his own land, which liy 

 around Little Horton. Neither of these occupations was 

 congenial to Abraham Sharp, and on leaving Bradford 

 Grammar School at the age of sixteen, his father apprenticed 

 him to William Shaw, a mercer of the city of York. Mr. 

 Cudworth gives the indenture of apprenticeship which has 

 been preserved, from which it appears that William Shaw 

 was to " teach his apprentice the trade or misterie of 

 a mercer and in due manner to chastise him." 



The embryo astronomer did not take kindly to his new 

 surroundings, and long before his term of apprenticeship was 

 out he left his York master, who was probably glad to be 

 rid of such an uncongenial assistant, and started a school at 

 Liverpool, where he taught writing and accounts, and tried 

 to instruct himself in navigation and mathematics. Tradition 

 states, that while in Liverpool he became acquainted with a 

 merchant, in whose house in London Flamsteed was boarding. 

 From the merchant he heard of Flamsteed's learning, and in 

 order to be brought in contact with so gifted an astronomer, 

 Sharp engaged himself as book-keeper to the merchant, and 

 came to London. From Sharp's memorandum books, and 

 Flamsteed's letters, Mr. Cudworth shows that Sharp lived 

 with Flamsteed in 1084 and 1685, and that he became his 

 assistant at Greenwich in 1688. In the third volume of the 

 Historia Ccelestis, in speaking of the mural arc, Flamsteed 

 says : — 



In May, 1688, J. Stafford, my amanuensis, died, and in the follow- 

 ing August I employed in his place Abraham Sharp, a man much 

 experienced in mechanics, and equally skilled in mathematics. He 

 strengthened the rim with screws, carved the degrees upon it, 

 affixed an index, and made all and each of its parts so skilfully that 

 it was a source of admiration to every experienced workman who 

 beheld it. 



Nearly all the observations of the Historia Cmhstis were 

 made with this mural arc, and from the date of its use the 

 real work of Greenwich Observatory may be said to com- 

 mence. The accuracy of its divisions, laboriously made by 

 Abraham Sharp, and the general superiority of its work- 

 manship enabled the first material advance on the work of 

 Tycho Brahe to be made in determining the places of the 

 stars and moon. 



Turning to Abraham Sharp's memorandum books, which 

 were kept with businesslike accuracy in a very neat hand, we 

 find several interesting details with respect to this famous 

 instrument. Under the date August 18, 1088, are the 

 items : — 



P'i ye men tht brt up the instrument . . .£004 

 P* Koger Bates for the platform and or. things 



for the quadrant 11 6 



Spent on ye men that carried the quadrant up to 



Greenwich . . . . . . .006 



P^ for bringing ye deals from ye yard . . .00-1 

 Laid out for Mr. Flamsteed tor lignum vitae . (> 



From the entries in these books Mr. Cudworth finds that 

 Sharp was in the employment of Flamsteed at a very small 

 stipend, which was not sufficient to maintain him. There 

 are occasional entries of 15/. received from Mr. Flamsteed, 

 with several entries of money received from " my brother 

 and cozen." The inadequacy of his salary may no doubt be 

 explained by the fact that Flamsteed's own stipend as 

 Astronomer Royal was only 100/. a year, and for this he 



