Scope and Contents Batavia is a seventeenth-century cognomen for the Netherlands, to which David Gregory went in the spring of 1693, mostly to talk science with Christiaan Huygens. This document is a list of some books he wished to buy for himself and for friends back home, if he could find them. They covered Palladius, Thucydides, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Erasmus, "all I can find of the Roman Authors at Amst[erdam]", and others. On the reverse is a list of topics he wished to discuss when he finally sat...

Scope and Contents

Notes of a conversation in Holland with Christian Huygens, concerning an 'horologium' to show hours, months, years, and planetary positions. More general mention of the work of numerous other scientists: Notably, Huygens disputes the notion of John Bernoulli (James Bernoulli's younger brother) that the curve of an inflated sail is part-catenary and part-circle, and warns that Newton ought not to be 'deflected' into theology or chemistry.

Scope and Contents Conversation notes pertaining to a meeting with Christiaan Huygens in the Netherlands. Entry for 16 May 1693, following a jotted chapter citation (see note) and a squib about the glass used in microscopes, is an agenda for the discussion topics, which are to include foliate curves, Huygens' dioptrics (laws of refraction), compound 'astroscopes', gravitational theory of (his Oxford colleague from Switzerland,) Fatio de Duillier, a celestial-motion machine, a new pendulum for Huygens'...