Lot 12: [BABBAGE, Charles (1791-1871) and John HERSCHEL (1792-1871)] "Preface." In Memoirs of the

[BABBAGE, Charles (1791-1871) and John HERSCHEL (1792-1871)] "Preface." In Memoirs of the Analytical Society 1813 (Cambridge: printed by J. Smith... and sold by Deighton & Sons [etc.], 1813). Pages. i-xxii.

4^o. Lacking pages. 29-33 that do not concern Babbage's articles. Modern cloth.

FIRST EDITION. Babbage, Herschel, George Peacock, and several other mathematically minded students at Cambridge University founded the Analytical Society, dedicated to the reform of mathematics in Britain, in 1812. This is the only volume of its Memoirs. It is also Babbage's first publication.

Mathematics at British universities-and by extension the entire country-had become stagnant over the previous century, due to the universities' partisan adherence to Newton's dot-notation and method of fluxions over the more powerful Leibnitzian differential methods and d-notation used in Europe. The first objective of the Society was to promote the continental method as embodied in Lacroix's Sur le calcul diffiérentiel et intiégrale (1802), which Babbage deemed "so perfect that any comment was unnecessary" (Babbage 1864, 28). In 1813 the Society published its single volume of Memoirs, written entirely by Babbage and Herschel; in deciding upon a title for the work, Babbage punningly suggested that it should be called "The Principle of pure D-ism in opposition to the Dot-age of the University" (Babbage 1864, 29). Van Sinderen 1980, no. 1. When OOC was written OCLC cited three copies, and there were no copies cited in RLIN. OOC 17, 18.