Trip
I had a great weekend speaking at a trusted computing symposium at Brown University and visiting family and friends in New England. I ended up visiting over a dozen people in six cities in three states (which is not so hard considering the size of the states out there). Among other things, I got a tour of the Mortimer Rare Book Room at Smith College, where I saw the actual plate "Typus Arithmeticae" from which the graphic in my bookplate is taken. (It appears in the first encyclopedia, the Margarita Philosophica, which the Rare Book Room has. It's kind of a propaganda piece for Arabic numerals.)
The Rare Book Room also has Robert Recorde's Whetstone of Witte, the first book to use the equal sign. I enjoyed the introduction so much that I transcribed some of it with the idea of posting it here:
Although nomber be infinite in incresyng: so that there is not in all the worlde any thing that can excede the quantitie of it: nother the grasse on the ground, nother the droppes of water in the see, no not the small graines of sande through the whole masse of the yearth: yet maie it seme by good reason, that noe man is so experte in Arithmetike, that can nomber the commodities of it. Wherefore I may truly saie, that if any imperfection bee in nomber, it is bicause that nomber, can scarcely nomber, the commodities of it self. [...] And if any thing doe or maie exceade the whole worlde, it is nomber, which so farre surmounteth the measure of the world, that if there were infinite worldes, it would at the full comprehend them all. This nomber also hath other prerogatives, above all naturalie thynges, for neither is there certaintie in any thyng without it, nother good agremente where it wanteth.
I also brought back some Massachusetts maple syrup. Would anyone like to try some?
