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Witchor Versiera or Versoria


A Crowning Achievement:  The Witch of Agnesi



From the Editor's Advertisement published in the front of the 1801 English translation.  This is the edition where the name "Witch" first appears:

"But, besides correcting the errors of the press, it was necessary to correct many little slips of the pen, and inaccuracies, which I found in the Copy.  For, notwithstanding it (the Instituzioni) was fairly transcribed for the press in Mr. Colson's own hand-writing, it had evidently been written in haste, and wanted revision; and undoubtedly would have received it from him, if he had lived to superintend the printing of it himself.  Of these inaccuracies, a few were in the language, but more in the mathematical part, where, although I seldom found any wrong conclusions, I found many mistakes in the signs and exponents of quantities, as well as omissions of numbers and quantities, and sometimes of whole clauses........"

The Editor began by saying Colson was a "learned and ingenious man who had obliged his Country with an English Translation of Sir Isaac Newton's Fluxions."  But this had been in 1736.   Colson had taken the "pains of learning the Italian Language, at an advanced age, for the sole purpose of translating that work into English; that the British Youth might have the benefit of it as well as the Youth of Italy."    Later, working in 1801, the Editor had only the use of Colson's manuscript, and was not able to obtain a copy of an original Agnesi.