Benjamin Franklin Papers
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https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Franklin/01-03-02-0195

To Benjamin Franklin from Peter Collinson, [June 1750]

From Peter Collinson

AL (fragment): Library Company of Philadelphia

[June, 1750]7

[First part missing] Pray give my respects to Lewis Evans.8 I have not Time to write to Him but I putt his Mapps to Bowles one of the most noted Print and Mapp sellers near the Exchange9—and He Tells Mee he has disposed of few of them the Price is so High.

Thou will see by Byrd’s1 Letter the reason no Thermometers was done. So farewell.

The Books &c. for Lib: Com. I shall send to the Care of Friend Griffith.2

Per next I may more particularly consider thine of March the 2d. There is something very Marvelous in the Doctrine of Points.

Addressed: To  Benjam Franklin Esqr  Philadelphia

[Note numbering follows the Franklin Papers source.]

7Date assigned with reference to BF to Collinson, March 2, above, p. 472. The fragment seems to precede Collinson to BF, July 3, 1750.

8See above, p. 392 n.

9John Bowles (1701–1779), book-, map-, and print-seller in Cornhill, near the Royal Exchange. H. R. Plomer and others, A Dictionary of the Printers and Booksellers … in England … from 1726 to 1775 (Oxford, 1932), pp. 31–2. About 1760 he pirated Evans’ map of 1755, and reissued it several times. Henry N. Stevens, Lewis Evans: His Map (3d edit., London, 1924), pp. 19–20, 23–7, 46–50, 54–6.

1John Bird (1709–1776), mathematical instrument maker in the Strand, London. In 1749–50 he built for the Royal Observatory a very accurate brass quadrant of eight feet radius, which brought in orders for duplicates from observatories at St. Petersburg, Cadiz, and Paris. DNB.

2Collinson’s invoice, amounting to £23 2s. 3d., for books and instruments “lately received,” was presented to the Library Company directors, Sept. 10, 1750. MS Minutes, Lib. Co. Phila.

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