Back in 2003, I enjoyed 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 conversation on one of the DP forums, someone remarked that there were 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 was 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 seemed best suited to this. I obtained the 1995 Prometheus printing (paperback) which has most of the sections from Chittenden and is still available; I also obtained a copy of Chittenden itself through inter-library loan.

Update, September 2009: Someone inquired whether I ever completed an e-book. The answer is no: I did scan the text (and still have the images), but just as I was about to start a PGDP project, I found someone else who claimed he was nearly finished with a proofread e-book. Rather than duplicate his work, I stopped at that point. However, Project Gutenberg still does not have an English-translation Principia e-book as of this date, so I don't know if he ever published it. See below for an online site where you can view the Chittenden text (as images).

• 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.) You can view this text online at the following site: Newton's Principia at archive.org
• 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 Friday, September 4, 2009. Back home.