The Life of Dr. Robert Hooke.

Sir John Cutler having founded a lecture and settled an annual stipend upon Robert Hooke, M.A., of fifty pounds during his life (entrusting the President, Council, and Fellows of the said Society to direct and appoint the said Mr. Hooke as to the subject and number of his lectures), the Society ordered several of their members to wait upon Sir John Cutler with their thanks for his particular favor to a worthy member, and for the respect and confidence he has hereby expressed toward their whole body, etc.

On the twenty-seventh of June 1664, it was voted that at the first opportunity Mr. Hooke should be put to a vote for the office of Curator. On the twenty-third of November following, he was proposed as a settled Curator of Experiments, and on the eleventh of January 1664, he was elected and made Curator by office for life, with an additional salary provided in addition to Sir John Cutler’s annuity.

At this time, he read several astronomical lectures, some of which are published in this volume, and invented many instruments—particularly his quadrant with a roller on the limb; an instrument to measure the velocity of the wind; and he repeated the experiment of the vibrations of a pendulum two hundred feet long. The first proposal for the weather-clock was then offered, based on the description of one made by Sir Christopher Wren. The experiment was performed, and an account was given of the suspension of the mercury to seventy-five inches in the tube, which, with some additions, is printed in this volume. From this time, he brought in experiments, observations, designs for new instruments and inventions, or something significant for the advancement of knowledge at almost every meeting. He very frequently read his "Cutlerian Lectures," of which he published the most material parts in his tracts, printed at different times in quarto, titled Lectures and Collections, etc., comprising, in a concise and continuous discourse, the chief matters and subjects handled in several lectures.

Thus, the generous ardor with which the Royal Society was inspired continued until the year 1665, when, due to the great mortality Refers to the Great Plague of London. then reigning, they were obliged to stop and break up their weekly meetings until March 14, 1665/6. During this interval, the members retired to various places in the country, and Mr. Hooke accompanied Dr. Wilkins and some other ingenious gentlemen into Surrey, near Banstead Downs, where several experiments were made during this recess, an account of which was later brought to the Society.

At some of the first meetings after they gathered again:

Mr. Hooke produced a very small quadrant for observing accurately to minutes and seconds; it had an arm moving on it by means of a screw lying on the limb of the quadrant. This is all the account I find of it. Possibly this was the first ever made in that manner, though it is now sufficiently known and practiced. A large one of this sort, along with all its parts and the rest of the apparatus and the manner of using it, was published in detail by the inventor in 1674 in his Animadversions on Hevelius's Machina Cœlestis, page 54, in which book several other ingenious contrivances, instruments, and inventions are also mentioned.