Halley's Observations on Halley's Comet, 1682

Abstract

IN the record-room at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, are preserved nineteen manuscripts of Edmund Halley. In one of these, Halley's original observations of the comet afterwards called by his name were recently discovered by Messrs. Davidson and Burkett. The book is of about octavo size; it appears to have been originally a college notebook. On the cover Halley has written “Edmund Halley his Booke and he douth often in it Looke.” Part of the book contains neatly written notes (in English) on geometrical conies, with carefully drawn figures, chiefly written on alternate pages. The observations (in Latin) and calculations have been jotted down subsequently wherever there is room, and in many cases have been written over the original contents of the book. By a strange coincidence (it can, I think, be no more than a coincidence) the observations, now identified as those of Halley's: comet, are interspersed among notes on the parabola.