Exploring our archives

Hooke’s notes in the margins of the folio are intriguing as it is possible that they can reveal more about his original purposes for the notes that he took from the Journal Books. Firstly, they confirm that, at least for the Journal Books covering the later period, he was actually copying from the same Journal Book that are in the Royal Society archive today. Numbers begin to be given at the end of the copy of Vol. 4, where Hooke lists the page numbers for the meetings of the dates referred to. From there onwards, throughout the fifth Journal Book (1672-77), the last before he became Secretary, Hooke lists the page numbers by the sides of experiments or discussions that he is referring to. In earlier sections of the copies from the Journal Book the most common marginal entries are ‘q’ , presumably a note to query the other records for corroboration of the interpretations containing in the Journal Books and ‘NB’, presumably prompting him to take note of the contents. Both markings appear throughout the copies from the Journal Books, beginning in 1662. In the section before Vol. 5, page numbers seem to have been added later, in the margin, or in some cases on the bindings.

The section at the end of Hooke’s list of page numbers from Vol. 4 also contains a date, 8 September 1694. This is three years before Waller claims that Hooke began to write his autobiography (mentioned in the previous post). Another reason that Hooke might have been scouring the Journal Books in 1694 was his on-going dispute with John Cutler over the non-payment over the salary he claimed was due to him for the Cutlerian lectures that he was supposed to deliver at Gresham College from around 1665-6 onwards. This dispute had been ongoing since the late 1670’s, but had taken a new turn with the death of John Cutler in 1693. The affair was then taken on by Cutler’s nephew, Edward Boulter, who had initially been forthcoming in response to Hooke’s demands for payment but . Although the Cutlerian lectures seem to have been conceived of as separate from the affairs of the Royal Society, Boulter’s defense of 1695 contended that he should be allowed to inspect the records of the Society to verify whether or not Hooke had performed the duties he claimed that he had. Although Boulter does not finally seem to have consulted the records to prove his case, it is likely that Hooke did: an entry in the Council Minutes of 20 June 1683 notes that Hooke was to be allowed access to the records of the Royal Society ‘on occasion of his business with John Cutler’. Between 1683 and 1694 would have been quite a feasible date for Hooke to begin making his copies from the Journal Books, a process which perhaps led him to reflect on the other injustices apparently done to his reputation in the official records of the Society and to begin to plan an autobiography to correct these apparent errors.

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In November 1681, the folio records that ‘Mr. Hooke Produced A new sort of Instrument for Describing the Rhombs or spirall lines vpon the Planisphericall projection on the pole of the world and shewed how the same would easily Describe all manner of Proportionall spiralls whether Greater or Lesse whether wider or narrower. And mentioned also what vse it might be for nauigation and sea charts.’ A few months later, Hooke produced a globe about a foot in diameter fitted with this instrument, and claimed that he could ‘thereby both Geometrically and mechanically Draw all the Rhumb lines vpon it most exactly’. A ‘rhumb line’, although sometimes used to indicate a straight line between two points on a Mercator chart, seems here to have its modern meaning of a curve that crosses each meridian at the same angle and the spirals Hooke refers to describe the way in which a rhumb spirals towards one of the poles.

The instrument designed by Hooke apparently had numerous applications: this is probably what he used in June that year to demonstrate the truth of Archimedes’ ancient theory on spirals, namely that ‘If a straight line drawn in a plane revolves uniformly any number of times about a fixed extremity until it returns to its original position, and if, at the same time as the line revolves, a point moves uniformly along the straight line beginning at the fixed extremity, the point will describe a spiral in the plane.’

Hooke later used the instrument in other ways, attaching it to a compass in order to describe a parabola. This apparently met with some opposition: at a meeting of 15 February 1682, it was noted that Flamstead had ‘cavilled against’ Hooke’s method, ‘affirming it to be fals’. On the repeated demonstration of the working of the instrument, however, the Society agreed that it was ‘true and certain and the best way yet known of describing that curve’. The final reference is in March 1682 and refers to the use of the instrument to describe an ellipse. By this entry Waller has noted ‘Quere Mr Hunt what this was and how performed’. Apparently, then the instrument and its method of use had been lost by the time Waller acquired Hooke’s papers in 1708. Richard Waller, a strong supporter of Hooke’s claims to priority had also made annotations against Hooke’s manuscripts about clocks or watches in Trinity College Cambridge – perhaps believing that they contained the solution to the long-term problem of longitude. He may, therefore, have also believed that this lost instrument was a significant piece of equipment in Hooke’s claim to have invented a new method of planispherical projection to be used in mapping.

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Well, we are still not exactly sure! As Lisa Jardine and Robyn Adams wrote in their recent article in Notes of Records of the Royal Society the folio was found under mysterious circumstances. It has been indexed to some extent by Hooke’s posthumous editor William Derham. Based on the original inscription on the cover, Derham suggests that the first hundred pages are extracts from the Journal Books, the official record of meetings, during the period in which Henry Oldenburg was Secretary of the Royal Society. The rest of the manuscript, which runs to 635 pages in total appears to consist of original minutes from the period during which Robert Hooke was Secretary, 1677-1682 with a few additional pages from 1691.

The original minutes of the Royal Society are preserved in the archives, with the exception of the period in which Hooke was Secretary, for which there are binders left empty for the missing pages. It seems, however, that the Royal Society did have some of Hooke’s minutes: in February 1682 the Council demanded that he ‘deliuer up into the hands of either of the Secretary’s all such Books and Papers as any way belong to the society or came to his hands upon the account of his being Secretary’ and later that Spring a committee was appointed to meet in the Repository and correct omissions and mistakes in the journal books. Minutes of a council meeting the next year report having ’stichted paper books of Minutes taken by Mr Hook they begin the 25^th of October 1677 and end the 23^rd of February 1680/1′. Also in their possession ‘Another bound book of Mr. Hookes minutes, about ¼ full, it begins March 1680/1 and ends July 26 1682′. Finally, the council ‘Resolved that the minutes of the Mr Hooke be written into books suiting with the rest’.

So, the mystery deepens. These council minutes imply that at the original copy of the minutes was in the hands of the Council and, if their instructions were carried out, there would have been an additional copy to be entered in the records. Did Hooke reclaim his notes at some point after this, and if so, for what purpose?

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