A TREATISE OF THE SPHERE
Book Details + Condition: John Wyat (London, UK). First Edition, 1714. Hardcover. Leather binding with gilt text to spine. 219 pages. Includes ten (10) fold-out pages of diagrams to the end of text. Wear to leather hard covers (which appear to have been re-attached at some point); cracked interior spine, but binding remains firm; written number to title page and inside front board; toning to pages; Trinity College (Cambridge) stamp in 2 places; interior is otherwise clean and free of markings.
Volume by Reverend John Witty, chaplain to the Duke of Devonshire, which is subtitled "Shewing how it is deriv'd from that theory which justly asserts the motion of the Earth: as also of the projections of it, both orthographical & stereographical; demonstrating their properties from fundamental propositions, and shewing their uses." The book is divided into sections on the orthographic projection, the stereographic projection, the use of the projection in astronomical problems, and the use of the projection in the delineation of maps. Witty (1679 - 1711/12) was employed by English astronomer (and the first Astronomer Royal), John Flamsteed, from 1705-1706 in order to oversee the computations necessary to prepare Flamsteed's famous Historia Coelestis. Flamsteed spent some 40 years observing and meticulously recording computations for his star catalogue, which would eventually triple the number of entries in Tycho Brahe's sky atlas. Unwilling to risk his reputation by releasing unverified data, he kept the incomplete records under seal at Greenwich. In 1712, Isaac Newton, then President of the Royal Society, and Edmond Halley (of Halley's Comet) obtained Flamsteed's data and published a pirated star catalogue. After the death of Queen Anne in 1714, Flamsteed retrieved 300 of the 400 copies printed and destroyed them, with only 60 surviving copies.
