Royal Transactions

[stoutfellow]

One of the odder documents I've downloaded from Project Gutenberg is the first volume of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, for the years 1665-66. I can't say I understand everything - a lot of the items use long-obsolete technical terms - but still, it's interesting.

Among the topics I've read about:

• A dispute between M. Adrien Auzout and Robert Hooke on the art of lensmaking for telescopes
  
• A review of a book by Thomas Hobbes denouncing mathematicians, and an evisceration of Hobbes by John Wallis
  
• A description of a device for improving ventilation in mines
  
• Evidence that Mars and Jupiter rotate on their axes
  
• The care and feeding of silkworms
  
• A questionnaire, to be sent to farmers throughout England, asking about various agricultural matters
  
• Several bizarre theories of the tides, in those days before the Theory of Gravitation
  
• The differences in whaling near Bermuda and in the New England area
  
• Refrigeration techniques
  
• How to kill rattlesnakes
  
• Two theories concerning the sources of the Nile
  
• Barometers and other weather instruments
  
• A couple of autopsies

A lot of it is nonsense; a lot of it shows people creeping towards modern science; and a lot of it is simply entertaining. I may look to see if further volumes are available.