Illustration of Torbern Bergman's chemical apparatus from Opuscula Physica et Chemica.
Abstract
This translation from the original Latin is by Edmund Cullen. It includes notes and illustrations by Cullen and was published in 1784 by J. Murray, London.
ID number
RB-TB1784
Title
George Atwood - Atwood's Machine from A treatise on the Rectilinear Motion and Rotation of Bodies (Cambridge, 1784)
Abstract
As mathematics tutor at Cambridge University in the 1770s and 80s, George Atwood was responsible for introducing students to Newtonianism. To help with this task -- and to quell lingering debates about inertia and the living force of matter -- Atwood fashioned a machine that soon became known eponymously. The machine employed an ingenious system of weights, pulleys and a pendulum clock which demonstrated Newton's laws of motion.
