I have been enjoying participating in the Distributed Proofreaders project (in which many volunteers share the task of proofreading an e-book before it goes to Project Gutenberg). In a recent conversation on one of the DP forums, someone remarked that there are no books in PG by Sir Isaac Newton. Being interested in satellites, and knowing what a revered work Newton's Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica (the "Principia") is, I decided to look further into this work, to evaluate what needs to be done to turn it into a PG e-book.

The first task is acquiring the text. Very quickly I discovered that there have been many published versions of Principia; some copyrighted, some partial, and some (which might be suitable for digitizing) public domain and complete. This page summarizes what I found in my search to choose the one most suitable for a PG e-book. The Chittenden text seems best suited to this. The 1995 Prometheus printing (paperback) has most of the sections from Chittenden and is still available; I also obtained a copy of Chittenden itself through inter-library loan.

• Original: Latin, 3 editions by Isaac Newton, 1687
• Translation: English, by Motte, 1729: Nearly every English edition is based on this. This translation apparently was based on Newton's 2nd edition (there were 3).
• Chittenden, N. W., "Newton's Principia: The mathematical principles of natural philosophy"; 1846; New York (Daniel Adee); 581 p.: Billed as "1st American, carefully rev. and cor., edition". Library of Congress No. QA803 .A45 1848. Chittenden also includes "Newton's System of the World" at the end, plus a portrait and extensive biography of Newton. (In comparing this book to the Cajori 1934 work, you can see that Cajori turned the prose into formulas, which makes Cajori more accessible.)
• Prometheus Books "Great Minds" series, "The Principia"; printed 1995; 465 p.; ISBN 0-87975-980-1: This is a reprinting of the core of Principia from the Chittenden 1846 work (i.e., the Prometheus printing doesn't have the extensive Newton bio, nor "Newton's System of the World").

• Cajori, Florian, "Principia in Modern English"; (c) 1934 (renewed 1962); U. of California Press (Berkeley, CA)
• Cohen/Whitman; (c) 1999 U. of California Press (Berkeley, CA); ISBN 0-520-08817-4 paperback (-08816-6 hardback): A brand new translation based on Newton's 3rd (final) edition

• Frost, Percival; 1878/1854/etc.; London(Cambridge?) (Macmillan): Only has sections I II and III, OCLC 1239372, apparently 5 editions (last in 1900?)
• Evans/Main; 1871; Cambridge/London (Deighton/Bell): Only has sections I II and III
• Carr, John; 1821; London (Baldwin, Cradock, Joy): Only has sections I II and III

• This one seems to be the most cited. Currently it has sections I through IV, and shows it was last updated in 1998. I emailed the address on the page but received no response. The section headings don't line up with Chittenden; I'm not sure what text this effort is working from
• The David's In-Progress List shows that copyright clearance was given for the Percival Frost (Macmillan) text on 20 Feb 2002 (but see above; this is only a partial printing). It also shows "In progress 16 Mar 1999" which might be the above effort.

• Books by Isaac Newton
• Books In Progress
• David's In-Progress List (PG UK)

If you have thoughts on Principia I'd love to hear them! Contact information

Last updated Wednesday, July 30, 2003. Back home.