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Journal of the History of Collections 2005 17(1):1-13; doi:10.1093/jhc/fhi005
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© The Author 2005. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.

Collections and projections

Henry Sutton's paper instruments

Catherine Eagleton and Boris Jardine

In this article we consider printed paper mathematical instruments, in particular those which are reversed because they were produced by inking and taking an impression from an instrument, rather than by printing from a copperplate. Describing a previously unnoticed group of paper instruments by Henry Sutton, we outline their provenance and what is known of Sutton's life. The reverse-printed instruments do not have the same practical uses as the instruments from which they were printed, so we examine their place within seventeenth-century mathematical culture and collecting in order to understand why they were made and owned. We end by suggesting that studying these apparently useless instruments has enabled better understanding of printed paper instruments more generally, by forcing us to think outside the usual categories of theory/practice and useful/useless. Considering the roles of gentleman-mathematicians and collectors shows that the reverse-printed instruments were not useless at all, but instead were valuable objects in their own right.

Address for Correspondence Catherine Eagleton and Boris Jardine, Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Free School Lane, Cambridge CB2 3RH


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