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The Harriot online Project
Project info
The work of the English mathematician and philosopher Thomas Harriot (1560-1621) is amazingly broad, ranging from the concern with linguistic and ethnological questions to the theory of algebraic equations. In particular, topics of practical mathematics and natural philosophy that concerned also Galileo, such as fortification, shipbuilding, astronomy, optics, and mechanics, play a central role in Harriot's work. However, unlike his famous Italian contemporary, Harriot did not publish any of his scientific results, the only exception being a small report on his voyage to the New World that he undertook as versatile expert in the service of his first patron, Sir Walter Ralegh. Harriot's work therefore has to be reconstructed from his manuscripts. This fact has considerably hampered Harriot's reception, not only by his contemporaries, but also in the history of science.
Here, for the first time, a large selection from Harriot's manuscripts is made openly accessible through an electronic presentation: Harriot's notes on motion. Harriot left about 8,000 folio pages mainly containing his working notes and only few pages prepared for presentation (Add MSS 6782 - 6789 in the British Library and HMC 240, 241 in Petworth House, Sussex). The selection presented here contains about 350 folio pages preserved in the British Library. The folios have been chosen in a survey of the total of 8,000 pages by rough analysis of their contents in the attempt to produce a collection as complete as possible.
The notes document Harriot's work on the problem of motion in which he is primarily concerned with projectile motion and the motion of fall. The manuscripts are, however, highly unordered. Based on the results of scholarly work, the electronic presentation will in the near future be increasingly complemented with navigational tools that shall make the manuscripts more accessible.
Resources in ECHO Nice article about Robert's work
Online versions
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6782
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6783
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6784
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6785
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6786
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6787
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6788
- Thomas Harriot, Mss. 6789
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 240 I, 1-170
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 240 II, 171-253
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 240 III, 254-321
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 240 IV, 322-402
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 240 V, 403-453
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 I, Algebra, geometry, calendar, conic sections
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 II, Calculations from the observations of Hannelius, Warner, Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, on the vernal & autumnal equinoxes, the solstices, orbit of the earth, length of the year etc.
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 III, Snell, Eratosthenes, Batavus. Kepler De stella martis
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 IV, Drawings of constellations and miscellaneous calculations, etc., Iupiter's satellites
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 V, Triangles
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 VIa, Projectiles, centre of gravity, reflexion of bodies
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 VIb, The doctrine of nautical triangles
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 VII, Comets of 1607 and 1618
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 VIII, Spots on the sun
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 IX, The moon
- Harriot, Thomas, HMC 241 add., Two folios found amongst the Harriot papers
Maps
The present order of the pages in the folios is not correct. The maps serve as a secondary way to group the pages according to topics and to virtually connect pages that belong to the same subject.
Transcriptions
Transcriptions are made directly in XML according to the ECHO schema (Documentation (mostly German)). We also recommend the use of text editors that offer autocompletion in connection with the Schema which facilitates the editing. Attached is an XSD version of the schema which can be used while editing texts in Eclipse. To make it work properly, the following line has to be added to the echo-Tag at the top of the document:
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/ns/echo/1.0/ harriot_xsd/echo.xsd "
As for formulas, it possible to use LaTeX markup. There is a script that converts that code into MathML (link).
