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The Sir John Herschel Collection
The preparation of the print Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir John Herschel (Michael J. Crowe ed., David R. Dyck and James J. Kevin assoc. eds, Cambridge, England: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998, viii + 828 pp) which was funded by the National Science Foundation, took ten years. It was accomplished by a team of seventeen professors, visiting scholars, graduate students, advanced undergraduates, and staff working at the University of Notre Dame.
The first online version of Calendar was created in 2009 by Dr Marvin Bolt and Steven Lucy, working at the Webster Institute of the Adler Planetarium, and it is that data that has now been reformatted for incorporation into Ɛpsilon.
Further information about Herschel, his correspondence, and the editorial method is available online here: http://historydb.adlerplanetarium.org/herschel/?p=intro
No texts of Herschel’s letters are currently available through Ɛpsilon.
Sends paper on fluxions written for Edinburgh Encyclopaedia. Uses new formulas, dispensing with binomial theorem. Brings logarithmic and exponential formulae within power of common algebraic processes.
Accepts invitation to visit Slough and meet Charles Babbage. [Thomas] Leybourn may accompany WW. Seeking area of conic sections.
Please recommend London instrument makers to supply new Edinburgh observatory. Josef Fraunhofer was asked to make only lens for transit instrument, but wants to make entire instrument. [JH annotation: Recommended Fraunhofer for entire transit instrument and Robert Molyneux for clock.]
Introduces Dionysius Lardner, author of system of algebraic geometry, visiting England.
Received volume on double stars by JH and James South. Followed JH's advice, ordered instruments from Germany. Asked Josef Fraunhofer to design transit instrument to fit pillars designed by Edward Troughton. Quotes Fraunhofer's response [in French] that pillars should be moved to accommodate his instrument. David Brewster anxious for JH to answer last letter.
Thomas Henderson will visit London and inform JH of events at Edinburgh Observatory. Will WW's paper on instrument for multiplication interfere with Charles Babbage's proposed machine?
Notes loss of many old friends. Three years seclusion with bad health produced WW's treatise on conic sections, translated to Russian. Sends book on geometrical theorems and two memoirs. Discovered JH stated in 1813 what WW thought was recent discovery about catenary.