Exploring our archives

Japan is generally thought to have had few dealings with foreigners between the early late seventeenth- and mid-nineteenth centuries. The Dutch and Chinese were the only outsiders allowed to establish trading stations in the period and as these scrolls from the British Library show, their activities were closely monitored. The English East India Company tried twice to win equivalent privileges, both ending in failure. Robert Boyle, who acted as an adviser to the Company, seems to have been involved in gathering background information for at least one of these attempts. Vol. 39 consists mostly of copies from accounts of travel, like Purchas’ ‘Pilgrimages’ and of copies of directives concerning the Committee for Plantations of which Boyle and Evelyn were members. It also includes some notes on the various trade items that could be supplied to Asian countries. The list for Japan is particularly interesting. Like many of the others it goes into considerable detail about the colour and texture of cloth favoured there, but it then goes on to list ‘burning glasses, spectacles, perspective glasses and watches’ from European as items required in Japan. Although Chinese and Japanese glass making was advanced at an early stage, it has generally been assumed that this skill was not used in making eye glasses and no trade in them has previously been noted. The references to burning and perspective glasses suggests that, despite their isolation, the Japanese had some interest in European scientific equipment. Another clue that some kind of exchange was taking place can be found in Vol. 6 of the Record Book: Between 1683 and 4, Robert Hooke experimented with several types of instruments for weighing, making different types of balances and stilliards (also spelled ’stillyard’ and ’stiliyard’, according to the OED this refers to ‘a balance consisting of a lever with unequal arms that moves on a fulcrum; the article to be weighed is suspended from the shorter arm, and a counterpoise is caused to slide upon the longer arm until equilibrium is produced, its place on this arm (which is notched or graduated) showing the weight’). On January 23rd 1684, the Record Book (Vol. 6 f. 143-4) records Hooke experimenting with Japanese scales and weights ‘made and adjusted in that country with great care and curiosity’. Hooke describes the brass weights as bearing the seal of the Emperor and, although does not name the person who had brought him the weights, notes that ‘[t]hese (as I was informed by the person who brought them from the Indies) are by a severe penalty prohibited to be exported to any other place and are of great Value in the place itself’. Presumably from the same source, Hooke had acquired a Japanese stilliard ‘made upon the same principle as our Common Stilyards but with greater curiosity and for smaller weights than we generally use them’ with a beam of tapering ivory and the scale or disk suspended by a silk thread, which passed through a hole in the beam. The use of silk ‘bows’ rather than handles also made it easier to reposition the weight as needed and, Hooke concluded made ‘the whole instrument as exact for weighing silver as our Seals with severall weights and consequently less troublesome’. As a result of his examination of the Japanese stilliard, Hooke made another ‘of my own invention by which the weight of any Body might be found without the trouble of removing the weight which is necessary both in the Indian and in our common stilyard’. Hooke’s story about the Emperor’s guarding of the instruments bearing his seal alongside the evidence for European instruments entering Japan seems to have been part of a wider policy of monitoring developments among the Europeans while keeping them at a distance: an undated and unattributed folio among the Boyle papers in Vol. 39 gives an account, apparently from a Dutch factor there of a visit to the court to be reprimanded for interfering in the affairs of the Chinese factory, also based at Nagasaki. The Dutch were also warned that although their nation was now at peace with Portugal, that the factors should ‘keep a strict watch ouer ye Portugueez & ye Spainards yt if they should conscribe anything against Jappan, presently make it known to the Governor at Nagasaki, whereby we shall doe great service to the Imperial ma[jes]tie.’ The Dutch factory therefore seems to have been a channel for some exchange of information between Japan and Europe: the Royal Society’s questions for Japan (part of an early series of inquiries sent all over the world) were sent via the Hague. The answers, received in French from ‘MI’ are published in translation in Philosophical Transactions vol 24, no 293, p 1723 (PDF). M Peron and M del Boe are named as the recipients of another set of questions from Henry Oldenburg in 1671 and a further link was Wilhelm ten Rhine, a member of the Dutch factory.

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I’m transcribing the first half of the folio now, which is incredibly densely covered in tiny writing. It is taking a very long time…

Well, thats my moan over, lets move onto Hooke’s. Hooke usually refers to himself in the third person, adopting the formal style of the journal book that he is copying in this part of the folio. However, the section of notes taken in late 1668 and 1669 is annotated with several notes that express Hooke’s growing irritation with the Royal Society and his role within it. For example, on Feb. 11. he notes grumpily that ‘The Curator Absent a Comitte appointed for Expts. [which never did any thing] ‘.

In several places Hooke records what he sees as unreasonable obstructions to his theories. A cause of particular annoyance was the Society’s response to his attempt to prove that ‘a body once put into motion would move perpetually if it met w[th] noe resistance’, and that the decrease of motion was proportional to the resistance it met with. The first part of this argument would later be expressed in Newton’s first law: ‘An object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to stay in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force’. However, the Royal Society were unconvinced by Hooke’s arguments, as he notes, ‘insteed of hearing grounds & reason, experim[t] were always calld for. and all loaded with objections little to purpose]’.

This was particularly frustratring given that the perpetual motion of a body not acted on by force was not something that could be readily proved by experimentation. In his attempt to demonstrate this law, Hooke constructed first a simple experiment with two wooden balls. To demonstrate that resistance decreases motion, at the meeting of 12 November 1668, a trial of three balls, now known as a ‘Newton’s cradle’ was made:

‘either of the two extremes being Lett fall from a certaine height against the intermediat ball y[e] other extreme was impelled vpward to neer the same height that is the middle mouing very little of wch the Presid conceuid this the reason that the intermediat when struck by one of the Laterall found the Resistance of the other Laterall ball but this other Laterall met noe other resistance but that of y[e] air.’

A final complaint allows us to date the copying from the Journal Book to after 1672: next to his own proposition in October 1668 that rebounding did not arise from ’springy particles’ but from the amount of air contained within a body, Hooke notes ‘Wallis prsented this as his own. 1672′. Hooke was apparently particularly concerned with this period of his engagement with the Royal Society. In several places he makes notes to himself to cross-check entries copied from the Journal Book with entries in the Letter Book.

The best explanation for the copy and notes seems to be that the copies were intended to be incorporated in the record of his life’s achievements that Waller reported Hooke began in 1697. In the fragment copied by Waller, Hooke expresses his intention ‘to write the History of my own life, wherein I will comprize as many remarkable Passages, as I can now remember or collect out of suchg Memorials that I have kept in Writing or are in the registers of the ROYAL SOCIETY’.

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