Gunpowder and Geometry
Page 32
Mason, Charles 84
The Mathematical Repository 34, 239
Maty, Paul Henry 95, 103, 104, 111, 113, 117; Authentic Narrative 111
Maxwell (widow) 70
Methodists 11–12
Milbanke, Lady Judith (later Lady Noel) 181
Military Society 91
The Monthly Magazine 193–4
The Monthly Review 165, 168, 193–4
Montucla, Jean-Étienne 163; Recreations in Mathematics and Natural Philosophy 163–4
Morning Post 230
Morveau, Guyton de 179
Mudge, William 65, 174, 176, 191, 218
Müller, John 200
Napoleon Bonaparte 143
Napoleonic Wars 142–3, 147, 157–8, 201
The Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris 73–6, 77, 79, 80, 82, 221
New York 180, 243
Newcastle Courant 36
Newcastle Grammar School 32–3
Newcastle Jubilee School 214
Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society 32–3, 205, 213–15, 224, 233
Newcastle Schoolmasters’ Association 214
Newcastle upon Tyne 2, 3, 6, 10–11, 29–30, 214, 217, 224, 237; Back-Row 27; Black Gate 29; Flesh Market 24; Gallowgate 4; Hanover Square 28, 214; Percy Street 125, 214; Sidegate Street 3; Westgate Street 29, 44
Newcomen, Thomas 6
Newman, John Henry 243
Newton, Sir Isaac 23, 42, 60, 61, 105, 125, 138, 153, 196, 226, 241; Principia Mathematica 203
Nicholson, William 217
Northumberland, Hugh Percy, 1st Duke 41, 49, 50–1
Old Poor Robin (comic almanac) 176
Ord, Margaret see Hutton, Margaret Ord
Ordnance Survey 117
Oxford University 41, 48, 61, 217
Ozanam, Jacques 163
Pappus of Alexandria 185
Paris 179, 195, 201
Paris Academy 195
Parr, Dr Samuel 22
Peace of Amiens (1802) 179
Peace of Paris (1783) 69
Peacock, George 220
Pearson, Richard 166
Pennsylvania 180
Pestalozzi, Johann Heinrich 212
Philadelphia 178
Philosophical Transactions 83, 85, 87, 93, 96, 103, 108, 116, 120, 123, 139, 166–8, 187, 198, 217, 218, 222, 239
Phipps, Colonel J. 83
Pindar, Peter, Peter’s Prophecy; or, The President and the Poet 111–12
Pitt, William ‘the Younger’ 142, 158
Playfair, John 135, 152, 155, 171, 183, 184, 188, 197, 204, 222
Pollock, Allen 55, 62–4, 65, 66
Pond, John 217
Poore, Edward 105
Pope, Alexander 201, 229
Potts, Charles Hutton (soldier) 230
Priestley, Joseph 22, 200
Pringle, Sir John 92–3, 96, 99–100, 104, 205
Prudhoe 40
Quarterly Review 230
Quebec 201
Radcliffe, Ann 229
Ramsay, Allan; Gentle Shepherd 205; Poems 205; Scots Poems of Before 1600 205
Ravenscroft, Lord 3
Read, Nathan S., An Astronomical Dictionary 178
Rennie, George 222
Rennie, John 224
Richmond, Charles Lennox, 3rd Duke 135
Riddle, Edward 174, 242
River Tyne 2
Robertson, Abram 152
Robertson, John 185
Robins, Benjamin 88–9, 136, 138, 180
Robson (teacher) 9, 37
Rollinson, Edward 81
Rotherham, Caleb 33
Royal Artillery 59, 64, 88, 90–1, 124, 126–7, 132, 137, 143, 144, 158, 199, 224, 230, 237
Royal Astronomical Society see Astronomical Society of London
Royal Engineers 143, 224, 237
Royal Institution 215, 217
Royal Laboratory, Woolwich 141
Royal Mathematical School, Christ’s Hospital 48
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich 48–9, 51, 88, 117; cadets 56–9, 127–8; conditions at 143–4; development and reform 54–5, 127; discipline, noise and fun 57–9, 67–8, 144; disruption caused by war in US and Europe 68–9, 143–5; entrance exam and graduation 64, 66–7; gunnery lessons 59–60; high reputation of 131–2; Hutton as Professor at 48–51, 52–68, 82, 127–8, 144, 160–2; mathematics teaching at 60–2, 127, 160–1; move to new buildings 172; physical description and history 53–4; problems at 191–2; return to normality after American War 127; teaching staff 55, 62–4, 65–6, 145, 174, 176, 177, 202; training cadets for Napoleonic Wars 143–5
Royal Military College, Great Marlow (Buckinghamshire) 132, 143, 145, 172, 192, 200, 218, 237, 243
Royal Naval Hospital, Greenwich 174
Royal Observatory, Greenwich 41, 73, 81, 84, 96, 124, 155, 174, 215, 216–17
Royal Society 196; agrees to Abridgment of Transactions by Hutton 168; attitude towards mathematics and mathematicians 98–9, 167, 217–18, 223, 238; Banks as contentious president of 97–8, 99, 102–13, 115, 215–18; Copley Medal presented by 85, 92, 98, 108, 220, 221; criticised by Hutton in his Dictionary 217; Davy elected president 220–1; difficulties between Banks and Hutton 97–9, 100–2, 104, 110–13; eminent members of 49, 50, 83; fractious meetings of 94, 105–9; Hutton appointed Fellow of 83; pays Hutton to work on the gravitational project 87; re-elects Hutton as ordinary member of Council 226; role of foreign secretary in 95–6, 98, 100–2; Vignoles elected Fellow of 232
Royal Society of Edinburgh 118, 124
Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count 139
St Andrew’s church, Newcastle 4, 23–4
St Andrew’s University 174
St Asaph 117
St David’s 117
St Louis island 147, 157
St Petersburg 195
Saint, William 191–2
Sandhurst Military College see Royal Military College, Great Marlow (Buckinghamshire)
Sandwich, John Montagu, 4th Earl 49–50
Schiehallion mountain (Scotland) 84–7, 118, 171, 183, 183–4, 222
Scott, John, Lord Eldon 33, 225–6
Scott, Walter 229, 230
Shaftoe, Bobby 32
Shaftoe, Robert 32, 39, 49
Shaw, George 166
Shelley, Percy 229
Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, The Rivals 201
Sherwin’s Tables 78
Shrapnel, Henry 141
Simpson, Thomas 200
Society of Antiquaries 115
Society of Dilettanti 115
Society for the Improvement of Naval Architecture 217
Somerville, Mary 238
South, James 221
Spectator 10
Spitalfields Mathematical Society 224
Spithead 189
Stanhope, Charles, 3rd Earl 125
Stationers’ Company 81, 118, 235
Stewart (dancing master) 27
Stote Hall 21, 23
Stotte, Sir Robert 21
Strachey, Edward 186
Surtees, Bessie 33
Tartaglia, Niccolò 151, 185
Tim Bobbin’s Toy-Shop Opened 205
Toleration Act (1688) 29
torsion balance experiments (by Cavendish) 182–3, 222–3, 240
Tower of London 235
Townshend, George, 1st Viscount 49, 91
Treaty of Versailles (1783) 126
Trigonometrical Survey of Great Britain 174, 217
Trinity House School, Newcastle 174
Turin 179
Turner, William 214
University College London 232
Unwin, Professor 241
Valenciennes 201
Vanbrugh, John 54
Vanderbank, John 125
Vignoles, Camilla (daughter of CH) 28, 118, 145–6, 146, 157–8, 159–60
Vignoles, Camilla (granddaughter of CH) 232, 233
Vignoles, Charles Blacker (grandson of CH) 242; abandons the law for the military life 200–1; becomes ci
vil engineer and Fellow of Royal Society 232; becomes last trustee of grandfather’s trust 234; birth of 147; character and description 198, 199; clandestine marriage to Mary Griffiths 207–8; death of 233; gives Vanderbank portrait to Royal Society 125, 234; law chosen as his career 199–200; letter from Margaret Hutton 207; names two of his children after his grandfather and aunt 232; papers and diaries given to public libraries 234; reflective letter on Hutton 189–91; returns to London 231–2; taken in by Hutton after death of his parents 158–9; unhappy at will of his grandfather 233–4; unhappy family life 232–3; works through logarithmic and other tables for his grandfather 199; youthful incidents 200; Sylphiad 201
Vignoles, Charles Henry 146–7, 158, 159–60, 213
Vignoles, Hutton 232
Vignoles, Isabella 232
Vignoles, Mary 207–9, 232–3
Villantroys, Colonel 179
Vince, Samuel 218
Walpole, Horace 49
Waring, Edward 112, 152, 218
Waterloo 143, 201
Watson, Henry (military engineer) 50
Watt, James 223
Weale (bookseller) 130
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of 230
Wesley, John 11, 16; Character of a Methodist 12
West Indies 147
West Point Military Academy 178, 243
Whewell, William 238
Whitburn 13
Wildbore, Charles 174, 176, 218
Williams, Edward 48, 124, 174
Williamson, Joseph 125–6
Wills, Captain 211
Wollaston, William 220
Woodhouse, Robert 193–4
Wyatt, Mr 172
Yaxley, Huntingdonshire 175
York, Prince Frederick, Duke of 201
Young, Mr 40–1
Acknowledgements
My thanks, as always, to Jessica and to my parents for supporting this project in many and various ways; also to Aileen Mooney for invaluable assistance in securing the funding which made the research possible. Among my colleagues, Jacqueline Reiter and Anna Marie Roos were so kind as to read the book in draft and suggest valuable improvements: they bear no responsibility for its remaining defects. I am grateful to the participants at the conference on Charles Hutton in Oxford in December 2015, and especially to Emily Winterburn and Shelley Costa who helped to refine my thinking about Charles Hutton in the context of editing his collected correspondence. My special thanks to Camilla Barnes, Jim Campbell and John House for their help with Figure 13, and to John Vignoles for detailed information about the Vignoles family. Felicity Bryan and Arabella Pike believed in the book at a crucial stage and shepherded it from draft to publication; my thanks to them, and to the staff at Felicity Bryan Associates and William Collins who worked on the book.
My thanks also to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, which funded the research for this book; to All Souls College and the History Faculty, University of Oxford, which provided support during research and writing; and to the following libraries and archives and their staff: Birmingham Archives, Heritage and Photography Service; the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford; the British Library; Cambridge University Library; Durham Record Office; Firepower: the Royal Artillery Museum; the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas; the Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University; the London Metropolitan Archive; the National Archives, Kew; Newcastle Literary and Philosophical Society; the Northumberland Collections Service, Woodhorn; Plymouth and West Devon Record Office; Portsmouth History Centre; the Royal Society Archive; the Sandhurst Collection; Senate House Library, London University; the Smithsonian Institution; the Library of Trinity College, Cambridge; the Tyne and Wear Archive; the University of Cincinnati Library; and the Wellcome Library.
About the Author
Benjamin Wardhaugh is a Fifty-Pound Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. His research focuses on the history of numeracy and mathematics, and the ways mathematics influences and is a part of cultures. His work is mainly on topics in early modern Britain, including mathematical music theory during that period. Wardhaugh has taught in both the Mathematical Institute and the History Faculty. He is the author of several previous books.
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