4S6 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



[November, 



from a portrait in tlie possession of Mr. Nicholson, but the artist is 

 not nanipd ; Mr. Nicholson was at tlie period it was taken in the full 

 vigour of manhood, and the contrast between it and the portrait by 

 Train, prefixed to tlie "Treatise on Projection," is very great indeed. 

 The " Mechanics' Magazine" of that date also republished the memoir 

 from the " Builder and Workman's Director," which is the only one 

 published respecting the life of Mr. Nicholson, and does not extend 

 beyond 1S25 ; it concludes with this tribute to the worth of Mr. N. — 

 "The whole of his active and scientific labours has been directed 

 lowards applying science to useful purposes." At the meeting in 

 Newcastle, before alluded to, Mr. Buddie said "Mr. Nicholson has 

 devoted his life to those branches of science which are of the greatest 

 practical use to society, and he has bestowed the fruits of his labour 

 freely on the public, without having leceived anything like an adequate 

 reward." At the same meeting other speakers alluded to Mr. Nichol- 

 son's character through life as being excellent and unexceptionable, and 

 to the service which each had obtained in bis own professional ad- 

 vancement from the works of that excellent author. The above 

 notices entitle Mr. Nicholson to the character of a practical man, a 

 scientific man, and a good man, qualities not uniformly to be found in 

 individuals in general. But to return to the former memoir, which 

 contains several anecdotes. One of these is related of the precocious 

 talent and industry of Nicholson in his youth, and the difficulties 

 which he had, on account of poverty, in obtaining proper books con- 

 sonant with his own pursuits. Even before he went to school he 

 showed a turn for drawing and modelling machines from the mills in 

 his neighbourhood. On the north bank of a small river near his 

 father's house was a small mill for dressing barley, and on the same 

 river were saw, flour, and snuff mills. Young Nicholson was trying a 

 model of a saw mill worked by wind in a lane near his bouse, the late 

 Earl of Haddington passing at the time was nearly thrown from his 

 liorse, and pursued Nicholson; on finding out the cause of the fright 

 the Earl gave Nicholson half a crown and took him to the hall. 

 Whilst at school, Nicholson borrowed from an elder boy a copy of 

 Commadine's Euclid, translated by Cann ; the upper plate of diagrams 

 of the 18th proposition of the 3rd book was wanting, he however con- 

 structed one from the demonstrations. Whilst in Edinburgh he 

 went to Mr. Bell, a noted bookseller, and obtain'~d Emerson's Fluxions 

 on credit, which he paid for by instalments, and whicli is stated in the 

 former memoir as an excess of liberality on the part of the bookseller 

 to the pressing necessities of poor Nicholson. It also states that 

 "Emerson's Fluxions," which is one of the most difficult works in that 

 branch of analytical science, was soon followed up by other books, 

 among w hich were " M'L.arriu's Algebra," " Ward's Introduction to 

 Mathematics," and "Salmon's London Art of Building." 



Mr. Nicholson was the first author to write on hinges for dours, and 

 to publish plans of roofs as executed, which he did in his " Joiner's 

 Assistant," and was also the first who discovered that Grecian mould- 

 ings were the sections of a cone, and was the inventor of the applica- 

 tion of orthographical projection to solids in general, which appeared 

 in "Rees' Cyclopaedia" and was previously unknown to English or 

 continental writers, and also published in his " Carpenter's Guide" the 

 plan of finding points in the periphery of an ellipse by the intersec- 

 tion of lines, and which plan was used in describing the arches of 

 London Bridge. The generalization and discovery of orthographical 

 projection 1 think the greatest work in the life of Nicholson; in the 

 " School of Architecture" he says, he first attempted it in the year 

 1794, and that it was published in vol. 2 of "The Principles of Archi- 

 tecture," which also contained new general methods for drawing 

 Gothic arches and the profiles of Grecian mouldings, and modes of 

 describing the spirals of volutes to any number of revolutions, hitherto 

 limited to three, as also to the projection of a paralh lopipedon and a 

 leaf of a capital of a column, and lastly, the entire doctrine of shadows 

 geometrically delineated. He also observes, in the " School of Archi- 

 tecture," in reference to Projection, as published in the "Principles 

 of Architecture" and in " Rees' Cyclopaedia," that "This method will 

 remain exclusively my own discovery until it can be shown to have 

 existed piiur to publication of, 1S13." He also defines the subject, 

 by saying it is the "orthographical projection of figures by means of 

 traces or intersections of the several planes of the object, with the 

 plane of projection, the dimensions and position of the traces to one 

 another, and the position of one of them to the plane of projection 

 being known." The adaptation of this science to really useful pur- 

 poses is beautifully exemplified in the case of handrails for staircases, 

 whicli are enabled to bi! manufactured with the least quantity of ma- 

 terial by finding the section of a cylinder from three given points, 

 whether these points are within or without the surface ot the cylinder. 

 In the "School of Architecture," in reference to the remarks of the 

 editor of "Practical Carpentry, Joinery, and Cabinet-making, published 

 by T, Kelley, stating that Nicholson derived his knowledge from 



foreign works, Mr. N. says, " I will defy this editor, or any other per- 

 son, to prove that ever I derived any information from foreign works ;" 

 the remarks of the editor that called forth this declaration were " But 

 there does not appear to have been much, if any, assistance derived 

 from those foreign works by any writer prior to Nicholson ;" the works 

 alluded to were "Coupe des Pierres et des Bois," 1739, and " Geo- 

 metrie Descriptive," by Gaspard Monge, 179o; and further, as a com- 

 parison with Moiige and himself, as regards their two works, "they 

 are as differently conceived as can be, each having its peculiar advan- 

 tages and peculiar claim to originality in the problems and examples, 

 which are by no means common to both ;" and further, in reference to 

 another work in French, in a small 12rao. volume, on the "Projection 

 of Shadows," Mr. N. observes that he has forgotten the name of the 

 author, and that most of his examples on the projection of shadows 

 were before the public ere it fell into bis hands. The editor of the 

 work on carpentry previously mentioned, however, gives the credit to 

 Mr. N. as being the introducer of the true principles of carpentry, and 

 of making valuable additions and corrections to the labours of those 

 who had preceded him. His words are — "The establishment of the 

 principles of joinery in this country on the basis of geometrical 

 science was, however, reserved for Nicholson." In the "Civil Engi- 

 neer and Archiiecl's Journal" for 1840, is a letter from Mr. Nicholson 

 in reply to Mr. George Buck, on the oblique arch, where he says had 

 not Mr. Buck been acquainted with his work on stone cutting, in all 

 probability Mr. Buck's essay would not have had an existence. The 

 letter is dated Newcastle, May 23, 1840, and is written under great 

 excitement, and shows tliat Mr. N. was becoming enfeebled ; I rather 

 suspect it had to be written by a friend, as Nicholson was unable to do 

 so. Mr. Buck wrote a letter in reply in the same Journal, and he also 

 called in the aid of his assistant, Mr. W. H. Barlow, the son of the 

 professor. 



In conclusion, I must say that I think the testimony of Mr. Nichol- 

 son, C. E., Mr. Welch, C.E., Mr. Hogg, mason, and Mr. Ridley, mason, 

 is sufficient to show that Mr. Nicholson was practically, as well as 

 theoretically, conversant w'ith the oblique arch. Mr. Fox, who wrote 

 oa the oblique arch, also commenced a paper war with Mr. Nicholson, 

 who had for his defender Mr. Henry Welch, for which correspondence 

 see the " Philosophical Magazine," March 1S37. There is only an- 

 other author on the oblique arch, Mr. Hart, who wrote in 1837, and 

 his name is introduced for the information of those who have attended 

 to this subject in particular. 



The " Companion to the British Almanac," for 1839, in an article 

 on the progress of the problem of Evolution, notices the claim of Mr. 

 Nicholson to the discovery of the method now in use " of obtaining 

 the rational roots, and approximating to the irrational roots of au 

 equation of any order whatsoever;" and the writer affirms, that Mr, 

 Nicholson is under an erroneous impression as to his being the first 

 publisher of Mr. Horner's simplification, and that Mr. Holdred com- 

 municated bis method to Mr. Nicholson, who stated, that he had sug- 

 gested some improvements, which Mr. Holdred declined to publish, 

 unless he were allowed to pass them as his own. The author of the 

 paper in tlie " British Almanac," in a foot note, states:—" We do not 

 know that this statement was ever answered;" and further, in another 

 foot note, in reference to Mr. Nicholson's remarks on Mr. Horner's 

 paper in his Essay on Evolution and Involution, viz. — " I perceive, 

 however, that the paper contained the substance of what 1 had pre- 

 viously written and published." The second foot note in reference to 

 the above statement of Mr. Nicholson asks — Where ? where i where? 

 and, in corroboration, says — we have searched the Combinatorial 

 Essays without finding anything which more resembles Mr. Horner's 

 process than would any other iu which such a succession of processes 

 occurs ; and then giving an example, observes : — " Here we should be 

 obliged to leave this claim, were it not for a more precise repetition of 

 the statement, which occurs in ' A Practical System of Algebra,' by 

 Peter Nicholson and J. Rowbotham, p. 19G, with reference to Mr. 

 Horner's rule, viz, ' The very same process was published in Mr, 

 Nicholson's ' Increments' in the year IS 17, and was derived from the 

 doctrine of combinations ; also p. 12ti " contains an improvement upon 

 the former, and is the same as that now used. The author did not 

 then think of applying these rules to the finding the root of equations, 

 though they were far superior to the method discovered three years 

 afterwards by Messrs. Holdred and Horner in point of brevity, facility 

 and perspicuity." 



The author of the article in the " British Almanac," in another 

 foot note, says: — " We have not explained the details of Mr. Nichol- 

 son's process ; for it either is not the ' very same,' as that now used," 

 — and in the body of the article in reference to the brevity of the 

 method of Mr. Nicholson, observes: — "If, then, the writing down of 

 two or three figures be avoided by a process which will involve a 

 moment's thought ; it may very easily happen that there is nothing 



