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III. An Account of Newton's Dial presented to the Royal Society by the Rev. 

 Charles Turnor, in a letter addressed to the Marquis of Northampton, Pres. 

 R.S., &;c. By the Rev. Charles Turnor, F.R.S. Communicated by the President. 



Received May 25, 1844,— Read June 13, 1844. 



My Lord, 



Your Lordship having been pleased to express a wish to Captain Smyth that I 

 should furnish a detailed account of the Newtonian Dial which I have had the 

 honour of presenting to the Royal Society, I beg to submit to your Lordship the fol- 

 lowing particulars. The dial was taken down in the early part of the present year 

 from the south wall of the Manor House at Woolsthorpe*, a hamlet to Colsterworth 

 in the county of Lincoln, the birthplace of Newton. 



The house is built of stone, and the dial, now in the possession of the Royal So- 

 ciety, was marked on a large stone in the south wall at the angle of the building, 

 and about six feet from the ground, and which was reduced to its present dimensions 

 for the convenience of carriage. The name of Newton, with the exception of the 

 first two letters, which have been obliterated by the hand of time, will, on close in- 

 spection, appear to have been inscribed under the dial in rude and capital letters. 

 There is also another dial marked on the wall, suialler than the former, and not 

 in such good preservation. The above are the only dials about the house which I 

 have been able to discover, nor can I find by inquiry on the spot that more ever 

 existed, though some of Newton's biographers assert that there were several. An 

 opinion has always prevailed that the dials now in being were executed by Newton's 

 own hand when a boy, which appears probable from the well-known fact, that at a 

 very early period of his life he discovered a genius for mechanical contrivances, 

 evinced more particularly by the construction of a windmill of his own invention, 

 and a clock to go by water applied to its machinery. Finding, however, this latter 

 contrivance (however ingenious) to fail in keeping accurate time, it is not improbable, 

 that with a view to secure that object, he formed with his own hands the two dials in 

 question ; and very probably the dial now remaining in the wall of the house, from 

 its inferiority in point of construction to that now in the possession of the Royal 

 Society, was his first attempt in dial-making. The gnomons of these dials have un- 

 fortunately disappeared many years, but as they are described in some of the printed 



* See Woodcut in the next page. 



