the World is under my feet

the World is under my feet
screen shot from the movie 'Elizabeth the Golden Age'

Thursday 22 March 2012

More about William Leybourn

Recently received a cloth-covered book called 'Leybourn's Plans of London Markets, 1677' written by Betty Rowena Masters in 1974.

It was interesting that I did not pay attention that this Leybourn is the same Leybourn in Susanna Gregory's fiction but just causally placed order because it is about public markets in 17th century's London. Before placing order, I have already learned the name 'William Leybourn' which appears many times in the fiction. What an absent-minded person I am!


Introduction about William Leybourn written by Masters:
"William Leybourn (1626-1716) was one of the band of distinguished surveyors who in the years following the Great Fire of London were engaged in the service of the City and in the multifarious tasks of rebuilding. Like Robert Hooke, John Oliver and the others, Leybourn's interests and activities were wide ranging. He began his career as a printer and, in partner with Robert Leybourn, possibly a brother, he printed between 1645 and 1665 many scientific and mathematical books. He was himself the author of many books, on land surveying, logarithms, navigation, mathematical and surveying instruments, and astronomy; he produced a ready reckoner; and he advertised himself as a teacher of the mathematical sciences, a surveyor of land, a measurer of buildings and a maker of sundials. A number of Leybourn's books went to several editions, and his most influential work on surveying, The Complete Surveyor, first published in 1653, passed through four editions in the author's lifetime and a fifth in 1722." (The Public Markets of the City of London surveyed by William Leybourn in 1677, p.9)


The publications Leybourn published:

Planimetria or the Whole Art of Surveying 1650
Arithmetic, vulgar decimal, instrumental and algebraical 1657, 1678
The Compleat Surveyor 1657
The Art of Numbering 1667
The Line of Proportions  1667, 1678 and 1684
The Art of Dialing, performed geometrically  1669, 1681 and 1700
Introduction to Astronomy and Geography  1669
Nine Geometrical Exercises  1669
Panorganon  1672
The Use of the Semi-Circle in the Surveying of Land  1673
Astroscopion, two large celestial hemispheres  1673
A Treatise of Navigation  1674
An appendice containing the Use of all the Instruments  1678
Dialing plain concave and convex  1682 and 1700


Information from: http://www.fig.net/hsm/news/leybourn.pdf

Complete title: The Public Markets of the City of London Surveyed by William Leybourn in 1677.
Author: Betty R. Masters, B.A., F.S.A., Deputy Keep of the Records of the Corporation of London
Publisher: London Topographical Society, London
Series: Publication No. 117
Year of Publish: 1974
Physical Description: 22.5cm x 29cm x 0.8cm, pp.55; illus., plans. Cloth cover, no dust jacket
Language: English


Reference:
1] Kenney, C.E., 1951. William Leybourn, 1626-1716. In The Library, 5th series, vol.5, pp.159-71
2] Taylor, E.G.R., 1954. The Mathematical Practitioners, of Tudor and Stuart England, pp.230-31 and part III
3] Richeson, A.W., 1966. English Land Measuring to 1800, pp.113
4] http://www.fig.net/hsm/news/leybourn.pdf

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