- No comprehensive study of Rowley's life and work is available at present, nor is he mentioned in the original Dictionary of National Biography Oxford 1885-1900 The earliest published account of his activities and products forms part of a company history: E. Wilfred Taylor and J. Simms Wilson, At the Sign of the Orrery; The Origins of the Firm of Cooke, Troughton & Simms, Ltd ([York], n.d. [c. 1950]), 6–11. Though based on extant artefacts and some documentary sources, this is speculative where Rowley's early life is concerned and is now known to be incorrect in some respects. Rowley's membership of the Broderers' (Embroiderers') Company was first noticed by Joyce Brown, Mathematical Instrument-makers in the Grocers Company 1688–1800 (London, 1979), 11. Further details emerged from studies of Guild records undertaken for ‘Project SIMON’: M. A. Crawforth, ‘Instrument Makers in the London Guilds’, Annals of Science, 44 (1987), 319–77 (Rowley, 340–1). Rowley's apprenticeship indenture is reproduced on p. 321. For a brief outline of Rowley's life and work as it was known in 1992, see A. V. Simcock, ‘Rowley, John (c. 1668–1728)’, in The Dictionary of National Biography: Missing Persons, edited by C. S. Nicholls (Oxford, 1993). The records of the Office of Works had not then been examined.
- For details of Rowley's apprenticeship and subsequent activities as a member of the Broderers' Company, see Crawforth Instrument Makers in the London Guilds Annals of Science 1987 44 319 377 Rowley married Katherine Harding at Wooburn, Buckinghamshire, on 18 April 1697 (Parish Registers). Their daughter Elizabeth was baptized at St Bartholomew's, West Smithfield, London, on 31 May 1698: registers in the City and Hackney Health Archives, St Bartholomew's Hospital. No trace has been found of any other offspring. Some family links with Buckinghamshire were evidently retained, as Elizabeth married James Harman, of Great Marlow (a few miles from Wooburn), on 1 January 1718, at St Paul's Cathedral, London; transcript in The Registers of St Paul's Cathedral: Harleian Society Publications, 26 (London, 1899), 46. The Bishop of London's marriage allegation, dated 31 December 1717, is signed by John Rowley and Thomas Wright, his former apprentice and eventual successor in the instrument trade: Guildhall Library, London, MS 10,091, no. 1200.
- T.W. 1756 . FRS, A Treatise Containing the Description of a Curious Quadrant, made by … John Rowley London preface, leaf A2r. The author is positively identified as Thomas Woodford (FRS 1708; other names have been suggested) by an entry in the Royal Society's Journal Book, recording the donation of the work by him to the Society on 11 November 1756. The copy in the Society's library has Woodford's name and the same date added, in red ink, on the title-page. A copperplate print engraved by J. Mynde (in the 1750s) of the scales on the quadrant, intended to be pasted on to a board, is included in this tract. For an extant example so mounted, see Alan Q. Morton and Jane A. Wess, Public and Private Science: The King George III Collection (Oxford, 1993), 416–17, item E43. It is probably no coincidence that the date of the tract (1756), 28 years after Rowley's death, coincided with the death of his widow, though no evidence to connect her with Woodford has been found.
- The Englishman: Being the Sequel of the Guardian Steele Richard October 1713 29 For the complete text of this piece, see Henry C. King and John R. Millburn, Geared to the Stars: The Evolution of Planetariums, Orreries and Astronomical Clocks (Toronto, 1978), 154.
- British Library, Department of MSS, King's MS 280
- In his Preface, Harris included Rowley in a short list of ‘Ingenious and Industrious Artificers’ who particularly deserved to be noticed (the others were Yarwell, Marshall, Hawksbee, Patrick, and Wilson). In the entry ‘Ordnance’ Harris wrote that Rowley had ‘very lately … contrived a Method of putting Anderson's Tables upon a Scale’. More details were given in his entry ‘Mortar-Piece’: ‘on a Scale of Box, where by sliding only a fiducial Edge of Brass over the Diagonals of the Distance required, both the Elevations, upper and lower, are shewn at the same time’. An extant example by Rowley, but in ivory and silver rather than boxwood, is in the Orrery Collection at the Museum of the History of Science, Oxford; for details and an illustration, see Turner Anthony Early Scientific Instruments: Europe 1400–1800 London 1987 243 243
- Prince George was also appointed Captain-General of the (Honourable) Artillery Company by Queen Anne, but in Rowley's time this old-established body of ‘citizen soldiers’, which had an organization similar to that of a City Guild, had no Ordnance connection. For its activities between the Restoration and the accession of George II, see Walker G. Goold The Honourable Artillery Company, 1537–1947 Aldershot 1954 chapters V, VI
- The locations of 27 bills by Rowley in the Ordnance Bill Books, Class WO51, at the Public Record Office, are given in Millburn John R. The Ordnance Records as a Source for Studies of Instruments and their Makers in the Eighteenth Century Aylesbury 1992 table III (p. 34). Copies of this privately circulated monograph have been deposited in the libraries of the Public Record Office, Kew; The Science Museum, South Kensington; The Whipple Museum, Cambridge; The Museum of the History of Science, Oxford; and elsewhere. The contents of Rowley's bills for gunnery instruments (only) are discussed in John R. Millburn, ‘John Rowley's Gunnery Instruments’, Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society, no. 32 (1992), 3–5. His Ordnance bills for weighing equipment have not yet been analysed; those for hydraulic equipment are discussed in §4.
- Society Royal Journal Book November 1707 19 and 10 December Letter from Roger Cotes to John Smith, 10 February 1708, in J. Edleston, Correspondence of Newton and Cotes (London, 1850), 179, 181, 198; cited in Derek J. Price, ‘The Early Observatory Instruments of Trinity College, Cambridge’, Annals of Science, 8 (1952), 1–12 (4–5).
- Royal Society, C.M.C.2, 254–5 (12 June 1712) and Journal Book (30 July 1713). See also Edleston Correspondence of Newton and Cotes London 1850 69 70 Newton, Thorpe, Machin, Rowley, and Hodgson visited Flamsteed at the Observatory on 1 August 1713: F. Baily, An Account of the Rev. Flamsteed (London, 1835), 98–9. In 1710 Queen Anne had authorized the Society to nominate Visitors to the Royal Observatory to examine the state of Flamsteed's instruments. In 1714 the Society wrote to remind the Office of Ordnance that it was responsible for repairing them, but no further action resulted until Flamsteed's death in 1719.
- Appleby , John H. 1994 . Rowley's Sundials at St Paul's Cathedral . Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society , : 28 – 29 . (The clockmakers' names should read Street and Wright.)
- National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, Inv. D.252
- For descriptions and illustrations of all of the surviving instruments in the Orrery Collection, see Turner Early Scientific Instruments: Europe 1400–1800 London 1987 231 254
- This instrument was described and illustrated in a copperplate engraving (of the exterior only) in J. H., FRS Harris John Astronomical Dialogues Between a Gentleman and a Lady London 1719 which went into a fourth edition with the same plate in 1766. A copy of Harris's illustration forms part of plate XIX in Edmund Stone, The Construction and Principal Uses of Mathematical Instruments (London, 1723); the accompanying text, ‘The Description and Use of the Copernican Sphere, called the Orrery’, is on 189–91. Stone did not say where this particular orrery was then (1723) located, but entries in the East India Company's records indicate that it remained in England until September that year, when it was ordered to be sent to China (though there is some doubt whether it was ever actually sent). For documentation in the India Office Records, see (1) Court Minutes Book MS B/53, ff. 158, 191, 224, 495, 498, 500; (2) MS E/1/6, f. 130; and (3) General Ledger of Personal Accounts, MS L/AG/1/14, f. 144. Another John Rowley, possibly a young relative though this has not been established, was appointed Writer to the East India Company on 18 October 1717 but was allowed to remain in England for a year to complete his education: Court Minutes Book, MS B/54, ff. 434, 467, 470. An extensive search failed to find any further mention of him in the Company's records.
- For documentary references, see Appleby John H. The Russia Company and John Rowley's Orrery Bulletin of the Scientific Instrument Society 1993 36 15 15 See also Guildhall Library, London, MS 11,893/1, entries for 23 February and 6 August 1714; and 18 February, 13 May, and 31 October 1715. This instrument was listed in the Musei Imperialis Petropolitani (Petropolitanae, 1742), II, pt I, 48, but is no longer extant. For details and a photograph of a ‘grand orrery’ that was destroyed in 1941 and is said to have been Rowley's, see Valentin L. Chenakal, ‘The Astronomical Instruments of John Rowley in Eighteenth-century Russia’, Journal for the History of Astronomy, 3 (1972), 119–35. That the instrument depicted was Rowley's is disputed by King and Millburn (note 4), 157.
- 1939 . The Diary of Dudley Ryder, 1715–1716 139 – 140 . London transcribed from the shorthand and edited by William Matthews,
- 1864 . The Diary of Mary, Countess Cowper 48 – 48 . London The date in the margin for Rowley is 12 February 1715.
- King's Warrant Book, Public Record Office T 52/27 f. 73 – f. 73 . The warrant, dated 4 August 1715, was directed to the Duke of Marlborough and Thomas Erle, as Master and Lieutenant-General of Ordnance respectively.
- Public Record Office T 52/27 no. 69. No record of the quarterly payment of his salary between 1719 and 1724 has been found. The financial records searched without success for additional information were: (1) Treasury: T 52/26–33, T 53/23–31, T 54/22–29; and (2) Ordnance: WO 48/54–57 and /63; WO 54/73, /77, /78; and WO 55/490, /502, /503, /507, /508. It is possible that the change in the monarchy in 1714 led to some alterations in procedure, with resultant confusion in the records. In the Ordnance books, in particular, it is noticeable that entries often occur in what would appear to be the wrong volumes or are charged to an apparently irrelevant account.
- June 1715 . The Daily Courant June , London Thursday 2
- See, for example, items 243 and 245–7 in Bryden D.J. The Whipple Museum of the History of Science, Catalogue 6: Sundials and Related Instruments Cambridge 1988
- For descriptions and illustrations, see Chenakal The Astronomical Instruments of John Rowley in Eighteenth-century Russia Journal for the History of Astronomy 1972 3 120 127
- Inv. Wh: 676; item 244 in the Museum's Catalogue 6 (note 21). See also Bryden D.J. Selected Exhibits in the Whipple Museum of the History of Science Cambridge 1978 16 16 A mechanical ring dial by Rowley, with almost identical decoration but differing in some other details, and signed in English, was sold by Sotheby's (London) on 16 November 1987, lot 185, and is now in a private collection. Another signed by Rowley in English is in the Musée d'Histoire des Sciences, Geneva; for the latter, see Turner (note 6), 179, item 190.
- Broderers' Book of Orders, 1705–56 ff. 129 – ff. 129 . 140, 141, 144. Guildhall Library, London, MS 14, 657/2.
- 1958 . Calendar of Treasury Books 32 – 32 . London pt 2 (1718), 348. Public Record Office, SP 104/212; James Craggs, Secretary of State, to Haldane, Whitehall, 20 June 1718.
- Inv. 43. Letter of 8 June 1994 from Professor Dr Ludolf von Mackensen, Director, Museum für Astronomie und Technikgeschichte mit Planetarium, Kassel Orangery, Staatliche Museen Kassel. For a full account and an illustration (i.e. drawing), see Coester A. Gerland E. Beschreibung der Sammlung astronomischer und physikalischer Apparate im Königlichen Museum zu Cassel Kassel 1878 22 23 and fig. 3 (incorrectly dated 1721).
- British Library, Add. MS 23, 072, f.61. Published in Vertue-IV The Walpole Society 1936 23 176 177
- Bignamini , Ilaria . 1983 . George Vertue, Art Historian, and Art Institutions in London, 1689–1768 . The Walpole Society , 54 : 1 – 148 . (35, 45–50)
- Bignamini , Ilaria . 1983 . George Vertue, Art Historian, and Art Institutions in London, 1689–1768 . The Walpole Society , 54 : 21 – 28 . 35–6
- PRO, WORKS 4/2 (Minutes) f.62v; WORKS 5/141 (Paymaster's Annual Accounts), 22 May 1722; WORKS 6/7 (Warrants), ff. 263–4, 265, 31 October 1722
- PRO, T 1/293 (Treasury Papers) and Calendar of Treasury Papers London 1889 6 1720 1728 216
- PRO, WORKS 6/15, ff. 74, 75, 76, 77. Also, WORKS 4/3 (Report and valuation received), 17 March 1725. Both Clay and Moore had previous connections with the Office of Works: the clockmaker Charles Clay replaced Mansell Bennet as superintendent of public turret clocks at the Office of Works on 26 April 1721, while the cabinetmaker James Moore held the post of Comptroller of Works from 22 September 1718 until his death in October 1726. For Bennett, see WORKS 4/1, f. 123 and entry for 2 July 1719; also Green David Blenheim Palace London 1951 11 12 For Moore, see Geoffry Bear and Christopher Gilbert (eds), Dictionary of English Furniture Makers, 1660–1840 (London, 1986), 618–19. There is a possibility that Rowley's ‘Great Solar System’ was the orrery subsequently enlarged and remodelled by Thomas Wright at the request of George II in 1733, and now forming part of the George III Collection at the Science Museum, South Kensington. For details of this instrument in its present form, see Morton and Wess (note 3), 13, 402–5.
- Donkin , S.B. 1957 . The Society of Civil Engineers (Smeatonians) . Transactions of the Newcomen Society , 17 : 51 – 57 . (51–2). Entry on Smeaton in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1975), XII, 461–2.
- King's Warrant Book, Public Record Office T 52/27 f. 73 – f. 73 .
- Colvin , H.M. 1954 . A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1660–1840 757 – 757 . London Idem (ed.) The History of the King's Works, v, 1660–1782 (London, 1976), 67.
- WORKS 4/1, ff. 43, 51, 88, and entry for 8 January 1717 (double engine). In October the Board instructed Rowley to repair the water-engine at Kensington Palace, which was reported to be in a very bad condition: WORKS 4/2, f.20. Sir John Vanbrugh, Comptroller and Surveyor of Gardens and Waters, built the Kensington Palace water tower on Palace Green in 1722–4: Colvin King's Works London 1954 195 195 (n. 2), plt. 19A.
- July 1717 . WORKS 4/1 July , entry for 3
- Dictionary of National Biography , L 354 – 356 .
- Letter to the author from Ellison S.K. Deputy Clerk of the Records, House of Lords' Record Office WORKS 4/2, ff.26, 43, 111; T 54/26, f.417.
- Millburn , John R. 1988 . The Office of Ordnance and the Instrument-making Trade in the Mid-Eighteenth Century . Annals of Science , 45 : 221 – 293 . See also Millburn, The Ordnance Records (note 8). The name ‘John Rowley’ occurs also in the list of ‘fee'd gunners’ maintained on the Ordnance Establishment (at one shilling a day) from 24 December 1714 to 31 October 1719: WO 55/502, and WO 54/73, /77, /78. It is not clear whether these entries refer to another person, or were simply a way of enhancing the instrument-maker's emoluments. A ‘Mr. Rowley’ was ‘Keeper of the Crown in ye Jewell Tower’ at the Tower of London in 1724: WORKS 4/2, f.176.
- WO 47/32 f.244 – f.244 . (Minutes)
- WO 50/7 ff.5 ff.5 (Quarterly Bill Books) 96, 98, etc.
- WO 47/30 ff.89 ff.89 (Minutes) 104, 125, 295. WO 51/102 (Bill Books), f. 49.
- WO 47/31 ff.287 – ff.287 . 299; note also f.74, Warrant to Rowley of 21 March 1718 to repair the Woolwich water-engine. WO 47/32, ff.61, 111 (debenture for £348.15.7). WO 47/33, ff.1, 225 (warrant).
- WO 51/102 (Bill Book), f.49. Millburn John R. Instrument-Maker's Ordnance Bills, Transcribed from Ordnance Bill Books (Classes WO 51 and WO 52) at the Public Record Office, Kew Aylesbury 1992 entry no. 13. Privately circulated: copies in the libraries of the Science Museums at London (South Kensington), Oxford, Cambridge, and elsewhere.
- WO 47/33, f.288; WO 51/114, f.68 Millburn Ordnance Bills Aylesbury 1992 entry no. 27.
- WO 51/105, f.47; Millburn Ordnance Bills Aylesbury 1992 entry no. 20. Rowley often let relatively small bills accumulate, and then submitted a single long bill without distingushing between items ordered on different dates and warrants. In this instance the bill has 38 items separately priced (some of them for multiple quantities, e.g. six pairs of calipers, £12), totalling £156.11.
- WO 47/31 f.229 – f.229 . The instruments intended for Capt. Mascarene probably included the plain table with ball and socket, three-legged staff, 100-ft chain, and accessories; and perhaps some of the numerous drawing instruments and scales mentioned in the bill in WO 51/105 (note 50).
- Dictionary of National Biography Vol. XXXVI , 406 – 407 . WO 48/63: imprests paid up to 2 February 1721 (‘To Paul Mascarene On Account of his Pay as Engineer at Appopolis £50’); description of Nova Scotia, etc., by Major Paul Mascarene, engineer, 14 February 1721: Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations (London, 1926), IV, 249.
- For a description and illustration, see Turner Early Scientific Instruments: Europe 1400–1800 London 1987 251 251
- WO47/20A ff.20 – ff.20 . 21v-22; WO 47/32, f.273. Rowley's bill dated 14 June 1715 for making a standard yard (and other items), including ‘Charges at the Exchequer and Guildhall’, is WO 51/93, f.86: Millburn, Ordnance Bills (note 47), entry no. 7. No bill corresponding to the warrant of 30 June 1719 was found in the search carried out for this work; but the indexing of the Bill Books is not entirely reliable, so it may have been missed.
- Anon., An Account of a Comparison made by some Gentlemen of the Royal Society, of the Standard of a yard, and the several Weights lately made for their Use; with the Original Standards and Weights in the Exchequer, and some others kept for public Use, at Guildhall, Founders-hall, the Tower, &c. Philosophical Transactions 1743 42 541 556 (549–50), read on 16 November 1743. P. H. Maty's General Index to Volumes 1–70 of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London (London, 1787) indexes this paper under George Graham's name, and a nineteenth-century librarian of the Royal Society has also written Graham's name alongside the entry in one of the society's copies of the General Index. In addition, Graham was credited with writing the paper in R. S. Journal Book (11 November 1742), and R. S. Council Minutes, III, 334–5.
- Anon. An Account of the Proportion of the English and French Measures and Weights, from the Standards of the same, kept at the Royal Society Philosophical Transactions 1742 42 185 188 read on 11 November 1742. This paper was also almost certainly composed by Graham: R.S. Council Minutes, III, 299. The French Academy had presented the Royal Society with a ‘Standard Foot of Paris neatly sett off on a Scale &c.’ and a ‘Standard half-pound weight in Brass’ on 23 October 1735: R.S. Journal Book under this date.
- Connor , R.D. 1987 . The Weights and Measures of England 243 – 243 . London 277. Connor claims that Rowley's Tower yard, based on the Elizabethan Exchequer standard yard, dates from 1720, but does not appear to indicate the source of this information. He adds that attempts to trace ‘this important measure’ at the Tower of London, the Royal Society, and the Science Museum in London have proved fruitless; so, also, has an enquiry by the author of the present paper, in connection with the Museum of Artillery in the Rotunda at Woolwich: letter of 23 June 1994 from Brigadier K. A. Timbers, Historical Secretary of the Royal Artillery Historical Trust.
- Colvin . 1954 . King's Works 67 – 67 . London 117; and Biographical Dictionary, 765.
- Tighe , R.T. and Davis , J.E. 1858 . Annals of Windsor 298 – 298 . London quoting from The London Gazette for 14 August 1681.
- Colvin . 1954 . King's Works 328 – 329 . London
- WORKS 4/1 ff.27 – ff.27 . 104, 117, 125
- WORKS 6/113 (Garden Books), f.4. Calendar of Treasury Books London 1961 XXXI 288 288 pt I (1717) 361–3. Colvin, King's Works (note 37), 335.
- June 1717 . WORKS 4/1 June , under 7
- WORKS 4/1 March 1718 ff. 154 155 11 T 4/20 WORKS 5/141 (Paymaster's Annual Account) for 1718.
- Colvin . 1976 . The History of the King's Works, v, 1660–1782 335 – 335 . London Bodleian Library, Gough Maps 1, f.23.
- Calendar of Treasury Papers London 1889 VI 49 50 (1720–8) 138. T 1/233/37. ff. 166–8.
- WORKS 6/12 (Patents) 14 – 15 . 16; WORKS 4/2 f.42.
- WORKS 4/2 ff.50v 63, 64
- WORKS 4/2 89v – 89v . 102, 132v; and 4/3: 8 December 1724.
- WORKS 4/3 April 1725 7 and 28 13 September and 8 November 1726, 4 July 1727.
- Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers London 1901 IV 270 270 (1739–41) 456. Colvin, King's Works (note 37), 335.
- H.M.C. 1913 . Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections , VIII : 335 – 335 . For John Molesworth (1679–1726) and his brother Richard Molesworth (1680–1758), later 2nd and 3rd Viscount Molesworth respectively, see the Dictionary of National Biography. At this date (1724) John was the English envoy to Tuscany.
- H.M.C. 1913 . Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections , VIII : 359 – 359 . Col. Richard to Hon. John Molesworth, 21 April 1725. For the charter and other details, see Richard Sisley, The London Water Supply (London, 1899), 175–86. Molesworth's engine for the Company, ‘not Proving Serviceable upon the Tryal’, was dismantled on 21 September and the usable parts bought for £330.17.61/2 on 2 November 1726: Greater London Record Office, Acc. 2558/CH/1/1, Chelsea Waterworks Company, Court of Directors Minute Book.
- Sir John Colbatch, appointed a Director of the Chelsea Company in March 1725, who befriended Rowley, negotiated between September and December 1726 the purchase by it for £278 of the ‘Tabernacle's of St Martin's’, to be used for covering the ‘Great Frame’ and a third wheel of their engine, and for building a warehouse at the Company's wharf. Chelsea Waterworks Company, Court of Directors Minute Book 1726 September 21 and 7 December Although no direct connection between Rowley and Gibbs (who was 14 years younger) has been found, there were numerous points of contact between them in addition to the fact that both carried out work for the Office of Ordnance. They were elected members of the Virtuosi on the same day in December 1716, and both had connections with Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford. It was Gibbs who recommended Rowley to succeed himself as a steward to the Virtuosi in 1720.
- Stephen , Switzer . 1729 . An Introduction to a General System of Hydrostaticks and Hydraulicks Vol. II , 323 – 324 . London plt. 23. Aldersey's Blenheim water-engine: 321–4, plt. 22. Switzer adds that Rowley's engine also resembled ‘the little Model, which stands in the House first erected, only in that there are five Pistons, and in the erected Work but four’; 324. According to Dean, in his history of the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, a stone building near the western end of the river wharf contained a water-engine with a ‘double-rimmed bucketted water wheel’, operated on the ebb tide, which supplied the hospital with water. It was made by Aldersey who serviced it under contract at £20 p.a.: Capt. C.G.T. Dean, The Royal Hospital Chelsea (London, 1950), 91. An exhaustive search of the hospital's surviving records has located no mention of Aldersey's or Rowley's engines: letter from Major R.A.G. Courage, CVE, MBE, Curator, 2 May 1995.
- Woodcroft , Bennet , ed. 1854 . Alphabetical Index of Patentees of Inventions London Aldersey, Robert, serial numbers 219 (1682: engine for raising water), 377 (1706: floating dam). Calendar of Treasury Books (London, 1938), XVI, 317; XVII, pt I (1947), 1061; XIX (1939), 478; XXII, pt I (1953), 96; XXIV, pt II (1950), 584; XXVI, pt II (1954), 342.
- Annabel , Walker and Peter , Jackson . 1987 . Kensington and Chelsea: A Social and Architectural History 141 – 141 . London
- Weinreb , Ben and Hibbert , Christopher , eds. 1983 . The London Encyclopaedia 148 – 149 . London (Chelsea Waterworks Company), 340 (Grosvenor Canal). The mid-eighteenth century print reproduced on p. 149, wrongly dated 1725 in the caption, shows the works after the installation of atmospheric engines in the 1740s.
- Dickinson , H.W. 1954 . Water Supply of Greater London 56 – 56 . Leamington Spa and London Full particulars of Chelsea Waterworks' supplies to St James's Palace, the Cockpit and ten named Whitehall public offices in 1726 are given in WORKS 4/3: 6 and 24 February, 16 March, 6 April, 22 September, and 13 December. A section of Horwood's 1799 map of London clearly shows the network of these canals, or irrigation inlets, at Chelsea, feeding the elongated, pumpkin-shaped reservoir. See this map section and two plates reproduced by Felix Barker and Peter Jackson in their History of London in Maps (London, 1990), 88–9. For the London Bridge Waterworks, consult Switzer (note 75), II, 319–21, plt. 21; Henry Beighton, ‘A Description of the Water-Works at London Bridge’, Philosophical Transactions, 37 (1731), 5–12; and J. T. Desaguliers, A Course of Experimental Philosophy (London, 1734, 1744), II (1744), 436–41.
- Chelsea Waterworks Company H.M.C. Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections November 1726 VIII 335 335 9 (salary backdated to 16 March 1724), 26 September 1727 (duties as Surveyor), and under dates quoted in the text. Rowley also held shares in the Company: Acc. 2558/CH/2/12, General Ledger, 1727–29, etc. Thomas Faulkner, An Historical and Topographical Description of Chelsea (London 1829), I, 48–9. The London Encyclopaedia (note 78), 152.
- Bignamini . 1983 . George Vertue, Art Historian, and Art Institutions in London 1689–1768 . The Walpole Society , 54 : 21 – 22 . 38. Add. MS 39,167, f.81.
- Smith , Alan . 1977 . Steam and the City: The Committee of Proprietors of the Invention for Raising Water by Fire, 1715–1735 . Transactions of the Newcomen Society , 49 : 5 – 18 . (14, 15). Burt, for instance, issued a receipt for £ 270, one of the 80 shares, to Sir James Lowther on 10 May 1721. He also held the post of Keeper of Frimley Walk, Windsor Forest, in 1716: Calendar of Treasury Books (London, 1958), XXX, pt II (1717), 367.
- Add. MS 39, 167, f.77v. The Diary of Humphrey Wanley Wright C.E. Wright R.C. London 1966 II 85 85 87, 98. Harley, 2nd Earl of Oxford, was also Gibb's patron. Bignamini (note 30), 36, 43.
- Desaguliers . 1734 . A Course of Experimental Philosophy Vol. I , 183 – 183 . London
- Anon., Relatio de perpetuo Mobile Joh. Ernesti Eliae Orffyrei Acta Eruditorum Leipzig 1718 November 497 499 Orffyreus, Das Triumpherende Perpetuum Mobile Orffyreanum … (Kassel, 1719), 146, 148. Dictionary of National Biography, XVI, 13; Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1971), IV, 183–4. See also Simon Schaffer, ‘The show that never ends: perpeptual motion in the early eighteenth century’, British Journal for the History of Science, 28 (1995), 157–89 (Rowley: 172).
- Williams , Zachariah . 1755 . An Account of an Attempt to Ascertain the Longitude at Sea, by an Exact Theory of the Variation of the Magnetical Needle 8 – 8 . London Eric G. Forbes, Origins and Early History (1675–1835), vol. I of Greenwich Observatory (London, 1978), 89. Rowley was also associated with another abortive attempt to solve the longitude problem: in 1722 Andrew Doyle, with John and Richard Molesworth (note 72) tried to develop what appears to have been a form of perpetual hour-glass, presumably with some means for automatically turning it over at the end of each sequence. Rowley's men were employed on making the mechanism: a letter (10 April 1722) from Doyle to the Hon. John Molesworth refers to Rowley demanding payment of his bill. H.M.C., Report on Manuscripts in Various Collections (1913), VIII, 337–8. Newton reported to the Royal Society on 1 March 1722 that Molesworth's device contained ‘an Artificial Sand made with fine Grains of Lead’. George Graham read an account of it to the Society on 7 June 1722: Royal Society, Journal Book, 1, 8 and 15 March 1721/2; Registered Book Copy, 11.207.
- Johnson , Samuel . 1963 . “ The Idler and the Adventurer ” . In The Yale Edition of the Works of Samuel Johnson Vol. II , 433 – 433 . New Haven and London
- The British Journal: or, the Censor Saturday January 1727/28 20 Guildhall MS 10,350 (St Dunstan's burials, 1709–39).
- Positive information on premises (and hence the probable size of the workforce) can be derived from sources such as leases and insurance policies, supported by records of rates and taxes, provided that their location is known. See, for example, the plans of Ramsden's late eighteenth-century workshops in Piccadilly, where instruments for the Ordnance Survey were made: McConnell Anita From Craft Workshop to Big Business: The London Scientific Instrument Trade's Response to Increasing Demand, 1750–1820 London Journal 1994 19 36 53 pt 1 Another possible source is Chancery Proceedings, such as those concerning Moses Stringer's foundry and laboratory premises in Blackfriars in 1701: for documentary references, see John H. Appleby, ‘Moses Stringer (fl. 1695–1713): Iatrochemist and Mineral Master General’, Ambix, 34 (1987), 31–45. None of these possible sources has yet yielded any relevant information relating to Rowley, apart from Land Tax records showing that he lived in Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, an address which is presumed to be primarily residential.
- An entry in the ‘Broderers Book of Orders, 1705–56’ indicates that in July 1721 the Company was preparing to sue Rowley for money said to be owed to them: Guildhall MS 14,657/2 1721 July f. 176 f. 176 29 This, together with his demand to Doyle and Molesworth for payment of his bill (note 87), suggests that despite handling large sums in connection with his work for the Office of Ordnance and the Office of Works, Rowley may not always have had adequate financial resources. The outcome of the Broderers' case is not clear; the Bernau Index at the Society of Genealogists, a major source of information on Chancery Proceedings, proved negative with respect to Rowley, since none of the 28 references to ‘John Rowley’ therein relate to the instrument maker.
Annals of Science
Volume 53, 1996 - Issue 1