62 A. Rupert Hall on NEWTON ON THE CALCULATION OF CENTRAL FORCES By A. Rurerr'Hiams, M.A., Pu.D. Lecturer in the History of Science, University of Cambridge. (Pus 1 To Professor H. W. Turnbull, F.R.S., principal director of the edition of Newton's correspondence sponsored by the Royal Society, must be ascribed the credit for the first description of the documents discussed in this note.!_ While examining papers in the Portsmouth Collection in the Cambridge University Library for a differont purpose, I happened to notice paper in Newton’s hand dealing with the calculation of contri- fagal accelerations." From a reference in Dugas its connexion with a mysterious passage in a letter which Newton claimed to have written to Huygens on 12 June 1678 (0.s.) was readily apparent’, ‘At this point I turned back to Professor Turnbull's article, and so found that this paper, and another, were already known to him. He has generously concurred in the publication of this note. Ina letter to Halley of 27 July 1686, Newton quoted himself as having written to Huygens on 23 June 1673 as follows : “Sir, T receiv'd your Iettors, with Mr, Hugen’s kind present, which I have viowed with great satisfaction, finding it full of very subtile and usefil speculations very worthy of the author. I am glad that we are to expect another discourse of the vis Centrifuga, which specu- lation may prove of good use in Natural Philosophy and Astronomy, fag well as Mechanics. Thus for instance if the reason, why the same vide of the moon is ever towards the earth, be the greater conatus of the other sic to recede from it, it will follow (upon supposition of the earth's motion about the sun), that the greatest distance of the sun from the earth is to the (greatest distance of the moon from the earth, not’ greater than 10000 to 56: and therefore the parallax of the sun not lesa than 56/10000 of the parallas: of the moon, because. were the sun's distance less tn proportion to that of the moon, she would have a greater conatus from the extn than 1 aang Newton's Letters", Manchesior Guardian, Saturday, 3 Octobor 1969, p. 4 Professor Turnbull hero annoutieed his intantion of printing the longer document in the Correspondence ; bat ho hae kindly consonted to @ proliminary publication in this form 84 Catalogue of the Portsmouth Coltcion of Books and Papers written by or belonging to Sir Ioaas Newton, Caxbridge, 1888, p. 1, sootion I, I, §. Presont prommarke MS Add 3968 (6), fo. 87. The papers ace not ' nsortod', aa Professor Tumball stated, but they ‘wore imponfootly analysed by the eateloguers of 1888. 3 René Dugas, La Mécanique au XVI siéle, Pris, 964, pp. 958-860. Graves Com- lites de Christiaan Huygens, vii, pp. 325-382. A copy of Horologiun Oseiliatoriwm,Newton on the Calculation of Central Forces 63. Jrom the earth. I thought also some time that the moon's libration might depend upon her conatus from the sun and earth compared together till 1 apprehended a better cause”® In fact, as the wording indicates, the letter was writton to Oldenburg, not to Huygens direct ; and for an unknown reason the copy of the letter actually received by the latter did not contain the italicized sen- tences. That, as the editors of Huygens works suggest, they were omitted on later instructions from Newton, is pure conjecture. As Professor Turnbull romarked in his article, the document printed below “incidentally contains tho working out of a numerical result which is baldly stated without explanation in the letter ” [or rather, in Newton's later transoript of his original letter] ; “ it concerned the reason why the Moon turns her face stoadily towards the Harth rather than towards the Sun”, Indeed, we might well go further and state that it is ‘apparent that, in this paper, Newton's interest was in tho caloulation of centrifugal accelorations for the sake of their application to astrono- mical problems ; it shows little concern with the exploration of pure dynamics in the manner of Huygens. Indeed, according to Newton's own statements, in other letters to Halley, the paper was written some time before 1673, and independently of Newton’s own reading of the Horologium Oseillatorium. In the well-known letter (20 June 1686) in which Newton rebuffed Hooke's claim to the discovery of the inverse square law of gravitation, the former declared : “That, in ono of my papers writ (I eannot say in what year, but Iam. sure some time before I had any correspondence with Mr. Oldenburgh, and that’s) above fifteen years ago, the proportion of the foross of the Planets from the sun, reciprocally duplicate of their distances from hitn, is expressed, and the proportion of our gravity to the moon’s conatus reoedendi a contro terrae is calculated, though not accurately enough, ‘That when Hugenius put out his Horol. Oscil., a copy being presented. to mo, in my leter of thanks to him, I gnve thoes roles ae tee eet thereof @ particular commendation for their usofulness in Philosophy, and added ont of my aforesaid paper an instance of their usefulness, 1 ‘oraparing the forces of the moon from the earth, and earth from the sun; in determining a problem about the moon’s phase, and putting » limit to the sun’s parallax, which shews Thad then my eye upon comparing the forces of the planets arising from their circular motion, and understood it”. And in a further letter to Halley (14 July 1686) Newton pushes the period of the composition of the document even further back : in thet very paper, which I told you was writ some time above fifteen years ago, and to the best of my memory was writ eighteon or nineteen years ago, I calculated the force of ascent at the equator, arising from the earth's diurnal motion, in order to know what would be {Sir David Browster, Memoirs . . of Sir Longo Newlon, Tdinburgh, 1855, vol. i, p. AOL; Huygens, Gwree Complites, vii, p. $20n. Ann. of Sci-—Vol, 13, No. 1, z64 A. Rupert Hall on the diminution of gravity thereby. But yet to do this business right, is a thing of far greater difficulty than I was aware of "*, Ib is clear that the paper Newton consulted, and which he asserted was written between 1667 and 1671, is that printed below : although in fact it contains no mention of universal gravitation. Itis solely concorned with contrifugal, and not with centripetal, accelerations, Florian Cajori, in his artiole on Newton’s ‘delay’ in announcing the Jaw of gravitation, supposed that Newton made his famous comparison of the Earth's gravitational force on the Moon, with the centrifugal force arising from the Moon’s motion in its orbit, on two separate occasions, that is, in 1666 and at some later date between 1667 and 16727. His argument that a calculation said by Newton to have been made 15, 18 or 10 yours ago could not have been the same as that which Newton, on a separate oveasion, attributed to a time 20 years ago, is hardly convincing. Novwton himself nowhere clearly states that he made two separate attacks on the same problem before the time when he rotumed to it, through his communication with Hooke and Halley, from 1679 onwards. Indeed his recollections seem more consistent with the view that he went into these questions during some single, fairly extended period of time, sinee there is no hint of a repetition of calculations with changed values for the size of the Karth’s radius. If Newton was correct in attributing the commencement of such studies to 1666, then it would be reasonable to assume that the present document belongs to about 1607 or 1668, certainly earlier than 1671, the upper limit suggested by Newton himself. Cajori’s discussion is indeed largely invalidated by the content of the present document, of which he was ignorant, which shows (as the quotation from the second letter to Halley indicates) that Newton's idoa of the size of the Barth was by no means as accurate, oven in 1673, as Cajori thought. ‘The paper is a single folded sheet, without title, and the text bogins abruptly : “1, Coxporis Ain cireulo AD versus D gyrantis, «4 conatus a centro tantus est quantus in tempore AD {quod pono minutissimum esse) deferret a cireum- ferentia ad distantiam DB: siquidem eam distantiam in ¢o tempore acquireret si modo conatu non impedito libere moveret in tangent AB, Jam cum hic conatus corpora, si modo in direetum 8. P. Rigaud, Historical Bssay on the frat publication of Sir Isane Newton's Principia, Oxford, 1888; Appendix, pp. 28, 40. Cf, algo the diaouesion of Florian Cajor in " Newton's ‘Twenty Years’ Delay in Annownsing the Lew of Gravitation ", Sir Isaac Newton, 1727-1927, London, 1928, pp. 172-175. Cajori, ep. eit, pp. 172, 175,Newton on the Calculation of Central Forces 65 ad modum gravitatis continuo usgeset, impelloret por spatia quae forent ut quadrata temporum: ut noscatur per quantum spatium jn tempore unius revolutionis ADEA impellerent, guaero lineam quae sit ad BD ub est quadratum periferiae ADEA ad AD*, -Scilicet, ost BE, BA:: BA. BD (per 3 clem). Vel cum inter BE ac DE ut et inter BA ac DA differentia supponitur infinitd parva, substituo pro se invicem et emergit DE, DA::DA. DB. Faciendo denique DAY (sive 4 DE x DB). ADEA®: : DB, a , tortiam proportionalem in ratione periferiae ad diametrum) per quam conatus reeodendi a centro in directam constantur applieatas propelleret corpus in tempore unius revolutions. Verbi gratia oum ista tertia proportionalis aequat 19,7302 semidia- metros si conatus accedendi ad centrum virtute gravitatis tantus essot quantus est conatus in aequatore recedendi a centro propter motum terrao diumum: in die periodico propelleret grave per 193 semidiamotros terrestres sive per 69087 milliaria, Et in hora per 120%, Et in minuto primo per 1/30" sive per 100/83 passus, id est 500/3 pedes. Et in minuto sofeunjdo per 5/108", sive per 5/9 digit. At rovera tanta est vis gravitatis ut gravia deorsum pellat 16 pedes circitar in 1”, hoe est 350 vicibus longius in eodem tempore quam conatus a centro circiter, adeoque vis gravitatis ost totics major, ut ne terra convertendo faciat corpora recedere et in acre prosilie. 2. Coroll. Hine in diversis cireulis eonatus & contris sunt ut diametri applicato ad quadrata temporum revolutionis, sive ut diametri ductae in numerum revolutionum faetarum in eodem quovis tempore. Sic sum Luna revolvit in 27 diebus 7 horis & 43° sive in 27,3216 dicbus (cujus quadratum est 7463) ac distat 59 -vel 60 semidiametris torrostribus a terra, Duco distantiam ) 60 in quadratum revolutionis Lunaris 1; ac distentiam superficie terrestris a contro J, in quadratam revolu. tionum 746}, eb sie habeo proportionalem 60 ad 7463, quae est inter conatum Lunae et superficie: terrestris recedendi a centro terrae. Ttaque conatus superficie’ torrestris sub aequatore est 123 vieibus cir- citer major quam conatus Lunae recedendi a centro terrae. Adeoque vis gravitatis est 4000 vieibus major conatu lunae recedendi « centro terrae, et amplius, Bt si conatus ojus a terra officit ut cum eodem facie terram semper respieiat ; Hujus Lunaris et torrestris systematis conatus recedendi a sole debet esse minor quam conatus Lunae recedendi a ‘Terra, aliter luna respiceret solem, potius quam terram, Sed ut de hie re justiorem aestimationem faciam sit 100000 dis- tantia systematis Lunaris a sole, & y distantia lunac a terra, Eb cum conficit 13°! 4% 12% 52" in anno otellari, sive 13,369 revolutiones Ra obtineo lincam quacsitam (nempe06 A. Rupert Hall on (cujus quadratom est 178,73) : @uoo distantiam solis 100000 in quadra- fum ojus revolutionis 1, et distantiam Lumac y in quadratum ejus revolutionum 178.73 et fit 100000 ad 178.78y, ita conatus terrae a sole ad conatum Lunae a terré. Unde constat quod distantia Junae a Terra debet esse major quam 100000/178,73 sive 559} respectu dis. tantiae solis 100000, Bt inde Solis maxima parallaxis in orbits lunari non crit minor 19’ et solis horizontalis pavallaxis in terra non minor 19" puta cum © et ? distant 90" ab Apogacis, Pone vero parallaxim esse 24" of crit distantia Iunae a terra 7063, et conatus ojus recodendi a terra ad conatum terrae recedendi a sole ut 5 ad 4 citciter. Bt sie gravitatis erit 6000 vicibus major conatu terrae recedendi a Sole. Sit Magni orbis $diam 100000, terrae diam, Eritque 365} x 365} 2 (sive 12408 ita conatus hominis a terra, ad conatum ejus a sole, Denique in Planctis primariis cum oubi distantiarum a sole reciproce sunt ut quadrati numeri periodorum in dato tempore ; conatus a sole Tecedendi reciproce erunt' ut quadrata distantiarum a sole, Verbi Sratia est in, 2 ©, 3, 21, h, ut 4/27, 10/19, 1, 2 5/16, 27 1/8, 90 5/6, sive ub I, 3 5/9, 6}, 15 2/3, 1834, 6144, reoiprooe. Vel directe ut 614, 173, 91, 39, 81/3, 1.” ‘This may bo somewhat freely translated as follows: «1. Tho tondoncy away from the centre [C] of the body A, revolving in the cirelo AD towards D, is as great as the distanco DB which the body would deviate from the circumference in the timo AD (which T take to be very short); for it would traverse that distance if the tendency were not restrained, and if the body were free to move along the tangent AB, Now this tendeney in the body, if it acted continually in a straight line in the manner of gravity, would impel the body through spaces which would be as the squares of the times ; in order to know the space [from C] through which the body is impolled in the time of one revolu. tion ADEA, T seek that line which is to BD, as the square of the B BA periphery ADEA is to AD’. Now an BD! © (ince the differences between BE and DE, and betwoon BA and DA, are by supposition infinitely smell) substituting one for the other respectively gives ps a ‘Then lastly by making DA? (that is, DE. DB) to ADEA?, ADEA’, as DB to in tho ratio of the periphery to the diameter [and this is the distance] through which the tendency to recede from the centre in a straight line, Lobtain tho line sought, namely the third proportionalNewton om the Calculation of Central Forces or acting constantly, would propel the body during the time of one revolution, For example, since this third proportional is [invariably] equal to 19.7392 [i.e, 2A] radii, if the tendency towards the centre caused by gravity were of tho same magnitude as the tendency to recede from the centre at tho Equator arising from the diumal motion of the Earth, in one day a heavy body would move through 19 terrestrial radii, or 69087 millaria [i.e, 65423 English miles]. And in an hour 100 through 120 millaria, And in a minuto through, millaria or ~ oes, that is, 7" foot. And in a second through Fag tet, or Snob, But indeed such is the force of gravity shat heavy bodies fall downwards 16 feet in one second approximately, that is, about 350 [read 346] times further in the samo time than [they would by] the tendency from the centre, and thus the force of gravity ia so many times the sreater, lest the earth in its rotation should cause bodies to fly from it and leap into the air. 2. Corollary. ‘Thus in different circles the tendencies from their centres aro as the diameters divided by the squares of the periods of revolution, or as the diameters multiplied by the numbers of rove, lutions completed in any given time, ‘Thus sinco the Moon completes a revolution in 27 days 7 hours and 43 minutes or in 27.8916 days (of which the square is 7464), and is distant 59 or 60 terrestrial rast from the Barth, I multiply the distance of the Moon, 60, by tho square of [the number of] revolutions, 1; and tho distance of the Barth's surface from its eentre, 1, by the square [of tho number] of its revolu. tions, 746}, and thus Ihave the ratio of 60 to 7463, which is the ratio between the tendency from the contre of the Earth at the Moon, and that at tho surface of the Knrch. And thus the tondency at the Herth’ surface on the Hquator is 12} times greater than the tondeney of the Moon to recede from the contro of tho Earth, And so the foros of gravity is 4000 times greater than the tondonoy of the Moon to recede from tho contre of the Harth, and more [346 x 12}—4325). And if its tendeney to recede acts so that [the Moon] always faces the Harth with the same aspect, the tendency of this system of arth and Moon ‘to recede from the Sun ought to be less than the tendeney of the Moon to revedle from tho Earth : otherwise the Moon would face towards the Sun, rather than towards the Earth, But, 80 that I may make a more accurate calculation, let 100,000 bo the distance of the system of the Moon from the Sun, and y the distance of the Moon from the Barth. And as the Moon completes68. A. Ruport Hall on 23 revolutions, 4 signs, 12 degrees and 62 minutes in one sidoreal year, or 13.369 revolutions (of which the square is 178.73), I multiply the distance of the Sun, 100,000, by the square [of the number] of [the Earth's] revolutions, 1, and the distance of the Moon, y, by the square [of the number} of its revolutions, 178.73, and as 100,000 to 178,73y, so is the tendency of the Karth from the Sun to the tendency of the Moon from the Earth, Whence it follows that the distanos of the Moon from the Earth should be greater than _ 594), as compared with the distance of the Sun, 100,000. And hence the maximum parallax of the Sun with respect to the orbit of the Moon should be not less than 19’, and the horizontal parallax of the Sun st the Earth not less than 19", I ‘suppose that the Sun and Moon are 90° distant from the Apogecs. ‘Take the parallax to be 24", and the distance of the Moon from the Harth will be 7063, and its tendency to recede from the Earth, to the tondeney of the Barth to recode from the Sun [will be] as about 5 to 4. And so the force of gravity will be about 5000 times greater than the tendenoy of the Warth ts recede from the Sun. Let the radius of the great orb be 100,000, the radius of the Barth 2. And the tondoney of a man away from the Earth, is to his tondeney asray from the Sin, as 365} x 305} (132,408) (to 1], Lastly, for the Planets, as the cubes of their distances from the Sun are reciprocally as the squares of the numbers of their revolutions in a given time, the tendency to recede from the Sun will bo reciprocally es the squares of their distances from the Sun, For example in Mercury Venus, the Barth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn it is as 4/27, 10/19, 1, 2 5/16, 274, 90§ or as 1, 3 5/9, 68, 153, 1834, 614 reciprocally. Or directly as 614, 173, 91, 39, 3}, 1.” What conclusions may be drawn from this paper ? (1) The caloulations are evidently those described in the letters to Huygens and Halley. (2) Newton could calculate centrifugal accelerations by @ method independent of Huygens’s discoveries. ‘Thus a conjecture of M. Dugas, “que Newton ait pu atteindre dés cette époque (1686) Vaccélération centriptic Wun mobile décrivant une circonference d'un mouvement uniforme, sans avoir A connditre de la vis ceniri- fuga du sens de Huygons” scems to be confirmed’, In the paper Newton never speaks of a central force, but only of conatus, or tendency towards or away from a centre of evolution ; he uses the word force only in relation to gravity, (In another document "Dugas, op. eit, p. 360,(3) (4) Newton on the Caleutation of Central Forces 69 considered below, he does however speak of ‘ vis terrae a sole. ..’, ‘vis terrae a contro ...’), His calculations are limited to accelerations, not extending to the forees producing them, A simple computation shows that Newton here takes the length of the Earth’s radius to bo 3313 miles, substantially less than the true value. There is no indication that he saw fib to revise this estimate even as late as 1673, and thus Cajori’s long discussion of this question is rendered fruitless. It is now a matter of fact, not of inference (as will be seon again below), that Newton was deceived in this matter, and could not have calculated the Moon's centripetal acceleration correctly. This of course does not weakon the obvious conclusion that no man of Newton's temperament would have announced a ‘law of universal gravitation’ on tho evidence available to him in 1666, or even in 1673. In fact, if a more correct approximation of 4000 miles is sub- stituted for Newton's figure of 3313, the centrifugal acceleration ‘at tho Earth's surface, on the equator, becomes 1-32 inches|/sec?, instead of 1-11; thus the ratio of the force required to produce this acceleration to the foree of gravity is 1/288, Multiplying this by 12-5, Newton's second ratio, the centripetal acceleration of the Moon in ita orbit becomes sot: This is exactly what is Tequired to demonstrate the inverse square law. From the value of 3313 miles, however, the value of g would be about 27, instead of 32t/sec%, a notable diserepaney. Even more remarkable is the concealment of the significance of the number (60)#in Newton’s ratio of ‘ more than 4000’ to one, Henco it may be that Newton’s mistake had some real effect in persuading him to lay aside work of this kind, Finally, and unfortunately for the historian, this document offers no direct and conclusive evidence that Newton had yet entertained the conception of universal gravitation, nor does it contain a formulation of the inverse square law. Nothing init is incompatible with either of these ideas, and the calculations, especially those relating to the successive planets and showing that their oenixi- fagal accelerations are inversely as the squares of their distances from the Sun (@ ratio established with the aid of Koplor’s Third Law, as Newton elsewhere recorded) could have boon used to confirm tho square-law hypothesis, It might indeed bo inferred that tho object of making these calculations with respect tothe planets was procisely the confirmation of this law : that it would bo ‘the fact remains that the obvious correlation botween the decrease70 A. Rupert Hall on of the centripetal acceleration due to gravity, and that of the contrifugal acceleration due to the planet's revolution in an orbit, difficult to imagine any other purpose they could serve’, But is not here noted by Newton; it is surely curious that, after explaining why bodies adhere to the surface of a rotating Barth (a problem treated by Galileo in his Dialogues) and why the Moon always turns the same face to the Harth, he should have omitted to record the reason for the plonots’ stability in their orbits With Newton, however, the argument from silence is never strong ; and the present paper certainly could not be taken to oxelude the possibility that Newton was familiar with the cloments of the theory of universal gravitation already, even though there is no direct reference to such a theory. ‘The other notes, already mentioned by Professor Turnbull, aro found on the verso of piece of vellum on which a lease was engrossed, A. note in Newton's hand reads “ 15* for a post fine of w hath past twixt my unele Ayscough & Mrs Oliver”. ‘The notes are scattered in disorder, slong with numerical computations : I have tried simply to follow them down the sheet. 7000 diam. 22000 miliar,—circumf, terrae. ¥' force from gravity is 159:5 times greater y* y* force from y* Earth's motion at y* Equator, 3000 mil. 5500p) terrae—16500000 cubit ‘Terra sub Equatore movet 16500000 cubit in 6 horis Et tantem velovitatem grave cadendo in 1436",14—23',9357= 23" 66",14 acquirot, gravitas movebit corpus per 28-04 inches in 0,00021013709 hours yt tein Qoorsgosanss Hebestees or 8001 596058 diamiter of y° Earth 5000 } diamiters of y* Harth=Solar distanco—3000 x 3500 x 5000 = 52500000000 braces ‘58 4%" 2 36° or 37’ moves y* length of y* ‘The Earth in about { solar distance 83677'=1394" $7/=58!2" 37 vis gravitatis in 83677’ movebit corpus per distantiam 100826500737600 braces Vis terrae a sole movebit corpus per distantiam 26250000000 braces in 83677’ * Professor Turnbull writes privately that he would profer to intorpret those calculations in euch a manner, and thus as evidenoo for Newton's pososssion of the square la. OU.L,, MB, Add, 3958 (2),Newton on the Calculation of Central Forces 7 ‘Vis gravitatis in 60" movebit corpus per distantium 14400 braces : : 5 istantiary 2620000000 Vis terrae a sole in 60” movebit corpus per distantiam 7o0tsa05a 3,7490143544 Soe y* y* force of a body from y* Sun is to y* force of its gravity as one to 3749 or there abouts ‘Vis terrae a centro movobit corpus in 229',090909 per distantiam 5250000 braces Vis gravitatis in 229',090909 movet corpus por 765747081 Soo y* y* force of y* Earth from its center is to y* force of Gravity as one to 144 or there abouts, 1: 800:: vis a contro terrae: vim Gravitatis 1: 7500:: vis terrae @ sole: vim Gravitatis!™ Tt seems unnecessary to elaborate on. those rough and inconsistent computations, which are naturally to be presumed to be earlier than those of the fully written paper. They would seem to represent an attompt to work out Newton's ideas at a very primitive stage, at what dato it is impossible to determine. Besides their computations of centrifugal accolerations, both docu- ments contain some much briefer notes on mechanies, dealing with the motion of pendulums, ‘Thus it may be judged that at the time of their composition Newton's thoughts were directed fairly steadily towards this science. Doubtless when more material of the same kind has been studied—and Professor Turnbull is engaged on bringing it to light—a clearer picture will emerge, We ean be confident that Newton's recollec- tion “(having found out how to estimate tho force with which a globe revolving within a sphero presses the surface of tho sphere) from Kepler's tule . . I deduced that the forees which keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about which they revolve ” was faithful, even though the dates of this discovery, and of its subsequent development, remain obscure. Newton certainly did littlo to facilitate the historian’s taslc, 111 oooms thet hore & cubit and a braeo (tracchia) aro talcen as equal, end as 1/5000 of a mile’, 3,800 * miles (3313 English milea) constituting the terrestrial radius. Frenco Doth are equal to 1-67 English feet. Yot it oan be computed from the relations givon above that Nowton has talon g varioualy as 18 eubitsjeoo4400 ‘inches’, and 8 braces, I ‘have not attempted to reconcile theso discordances,