A bibliography of English military books up to 1642 and of ...

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Collation. Tp., -fi, has coloured woodcut.—Arms of Bacon, -f ij.
Ded. to Sir Nicholas Bacon, +2 and Ai.—Pref., Ai2-4.~Arms of Digges,
liz.—Col.: "Imprinted at London by Henrie Bynneman, dwelling in
Knightriders streat, at the signe of the Mermaid. Anno Domini. 1571."
with device, \\2^.—Diags. and ills.—R.H., varied.—No pag.—Sigs. in 4%
+ (2 fF.), A-Z, Aa-li2.
Copies, B.M. i own copy.
Second Edition.
Fifteen-ninety-one.
A Geometrical Pra6tical
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Treatize Named Pantometria,
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* , , At London \
Printed by Abell Jeffes, |
Anno. 1591.
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Folio.
Collation, Ai, blank.— Tp., A2.—Arms of Bacon, A22.—Ded., A3.
Pref., A32-A4.—Arms of Digges, Cc3j.—Err., Cc4.—Diags. and ills.
Sigs. in 4% A-Z, Aa-Cc.
Copies. B.M. (two).
Contents. Bk. I., '* Longimetra," is on Topography. There is a full
explanation of the construdtion and use of the gunner's quadrant, and of the
theodolite, which is praftically the same as the " cosmodolite " of Norton.
On the derivation of the word " theodolite " see De Morgan (" Arithmetical
Books," p. 24).
The 2nd impression, besides an addition of fifty "Theorems concerning
the new Science of great Ordnance, resolving the greater part of the Artillery
Questions in the ' Stratioticos,' " has a supplement consisting of forty
" Diffinitions, taken out of my [first and] third Book of Pyrotechnie Militarie,
and great Artillerie j"
the other treatise
and twelve ** Geometrical Problems for understanding
of Architedhu-e Military and Nautical and great Artillery."
(V. No. 25 for these unpublished works.) Thomas Digges, who was not a
gunner, adopted a nomenclature of his own, which Norton, in his "Art of
Great Artillery," London, 1624, translates into the technical terms used in
gunnery. Thomas speaks in the Pref. of Leonard's invention of* Proportional
Glasses," by means of which one could see what was being done at a distance
of seven miles, and could fire powder and discharge ordnance at a distance of
half a mile and more.
In the " Stratioticos " (p. 359, ed. 1590), he says that
it was partly an "old written book" of Roger Bacon's experiments that
suggested the idea of these glasses to his father, alluding, no doubt, to the
" Mirror of Alchemy," written in Latin about the middle of the thirteenth
century, and printed in 1541,^ which contains several passages relating to
perspective glasses for military purposes, and to gunpowder.
" Leonard Digges, the father of Thomas, was famous for his mathematical
^
English trans., London, 1595, 4°.
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