Letter to Edmund Halley on corrections to the Principia

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: EL/N1/59, Royal Society Library, London, UK

Published online: June 2014

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  - 12 February 2014
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  - 16 June 2014
    - Code audited by Michael Hawkins
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<59r>

Sir

I have sent you the sheet you want. The second book I made ready for you in Autumn, having wrote to you in Sommer that it should come out with the first & be ready against the time you might need it, & guessing by the rate of the presse in Sommer you might need it about November or December. But not hearing from you & being told (thô not truly) that upon new differences in the R. Society you had left your secretaries place: I desired my intimate friend M^r C. Montague to enquire of M^r Paget how things were & send me word. He writes that D^r Wallis has sent up some things about projectiles pretty like those of mine in the papers M^r Page{t} first shewed you, & that it was ordered I should be consulted whether I intend to print mine. I have inserted them into the beginning of the second book with divers others of that kind: which therefore if you desire to see you may command the book when you please though otherwise I should chose to let it ly by me till you are ready for it. I think I have the solution of your Prob{lem} about the Suns Parallax, but through other occasions shall scar{ce} have time to think further on these things & besides I want something of observation. For if my notion be right, the Sun draws the Moon in the Quadratures, so that there needs an equation of about 4 or $4 \frac{1}{2}$ minutes to be subducted from her motion in the first Quarter & added in the last. I hope you received a letter with two Corollaries I sent you in Autumn. I have eleven sheets already, that is to M. When you have seven more printed off, I desire you would send them. I thank you for putting forward the press again, being very sensible of the great trouble I give you amidst so much business of your own {&} the R. Societys. In this as well as in divers other things you much oblige

Your affectionate Friend

& Humble Servant

Is. Newton.

Trin. Coll. Cambridge.
Feb. 1{3}{8}^th. 1686

<59v>

For his Honoured Friend
M^r Edmund Halley, to be left
with M^r Hunt at Gresham
College in

London.

< insertion from the right margin of f 59v >

M^r. Newton's Letter
Feb. 13. 1686.
Read

< text from f 59v resumes >