Workdiary 38 ('The XVII Century' and 'The XVIII Century')

Content: Experimental accounts, notes and observations from 1686-91, many involving the specific gravities of various substances

General Information

• Creation: 1689-91
• Hands: Hugh Greg (entries 1-22) uncertain (perhaps a formal hand of Hugh Greg) (entries 23-43, 47, 51) Thomas Smith (entries 48, 112, 122, 125, 129) Hand C (entries 44, 104, 130a)
• Source: Royal Society, Boyle Papers 21, pp. 219-54
• Languages: English (all entries)
• Length: [1]:111 entries, of which 100 are numbered 1-100; [2]: 34 entries, of which 30 are numbered 1-30
• Format: Folded foolscap sheets
• Note 1: A long series of over 100 entries were written on these sheets. The first 100 or so entries (excluding interspersed tables of specific gravities, which tend not to be part of the numbered series), were numbered retrospectively and the collection titled, 'The XVII Century', the title appearing, in Greg's hand, at the head of p. 219. On p. 245 the second and third entries were numbered 101 and 102 (the first entry on the page being 100). But those numbers were subsequently altered to 1 and 2 and the title, 'The XVIII Century', squeezed into the small amount of space between entry 100 of the XVII Century and entry 1 of the XVIII Century. It is obvious that the title and the revised numbering were retrospective, dividing up what was originally a single collection of notes into one complete 'century' and the beginnings of what may well be Boyle's last collection of notes. For this reason we have kept this collection as one workdiary, numbering the entries after 100 as 101 etc.