Extracts from Newton's notebooks

<1r>

In one of Sir I. N.^s paper books near some annotations of D^r Wallis’s Arithmetica Infinitorum – There is the following Memorandum in Sir Isaac’s hand writing

Iuly - 4 -1699 – By consulting an account of my expenses at Cambridge in the years 1663 – & 1664 I find that in the year 1664 a little before Christmas I being then Senior Sophister I bought Schooten’s Miscellanies & Cartes’s Geometry (having read this Geometry & Oughtred’s clavis above half a year before) & borrowed Wallis’s works & by consequence made these annotations out of Schooten & Wallis in winter between the years 1664 & 1665 – At which time I found the method of infinite series & in summer 1665 being forced from Cambridge by the plague I computed the Area of the Hyperbola at Boothby in Lincolnshire to two & fifty figures by the same method –

Isaac Newton

Memorandum in the same book a good deal upon chances & Musick

By another book it appears he bought in 1667 the History of the Royal Society three Prisms — & also Bacon’s Miscellanies pret – 1.6

<1v>

In another paper book – Sir I has writt in his own hand that December 20^th 1664 & on Saturday December 27. 1664

October 8. 1665 – Ditto

On a loose paper

M^r Oughtred Clavis being one of the best as well as one of the first Essays for reviving the Art of Geometrical Resolution & Composition I agree with the Oxford Professors that a Correct Edition thereof to make it more usefull & bring it into more hands will be both for the honour of our nation and advantage of mathematicks

Is. N.

I find in a paper book of his to which he has put his name & 1659 – Rules for drawing & making colours –

& in another of the same year a Prosodia writt out

In a letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburg offers to allow Maclaurin £20 per annum till Gregory’s place falls