John Barrow (historian)
John Barrow (fl. 1735–1774) was an English mathematician, naval historian and lexicographer.
Nothing is known of Barrow's family. He was initially a teacher of mathematics and navigation aboard ships of the Royal Navy. He retired before 1750 and devoted himself to writing and compiling dictionaries and other works related to his knowledge of mathematics and science. Many appeared in multiple editions and were translated and read in Europe, for instance by Napoleon.
Barrow's best-known work was Navigatio Britannica (1750), a practical handbook of navigation and charts still being advertised by its publisher, Mount & Page, in 1787. It included an examination of nautical instruments and explained the recently introduced vernier scale. Barrow seems to have been in close touch with nautical instrument makers while he was a naval instructor. It was not realized until the 20th century that John Barrow the "geographical compiler" mentioned in the British Dictionary of National Biography (1885 onwards) and the teacher of mathematics were the same person.[1]
Selected works
- Dictionarium polygraphicum (1735)
- Dictionarium medicum universale (1749)
- Navigatio Britannia (1750)
- New and Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1751)
- The Naval History of Great Britain (4 vols, 1758)
- Geographical Dictionary (2 vols, 1759–60)
- A New and Impartial History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Signing of Preliminaries of Peace, 1762 (1763)
- Dictionary of Arts and Sciences (1764)
- A Collection of Authentic, Useful, and Entertaining Voyages and Discoveries (3 vols, 1765)
References
- ^ ODNB entry: Retrieved 18 July 2011. Subscription required, citing Taylor, E. G. R.: Mathematical Practitioners of Hanoverian England, 1714–1840 (Cambridge: CUP, 1966); Napoleon Bonaparte, "John Barrow". In: Napoleon’s Notes on English History made on the Eve of the French Revolution, Illustrated from Contemporary Historians and Referenced from the Findings of Later Research by Henry Foljambe Hall. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1905, xviii–xx.
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