---
whatIsIt: Newton's Principia, First American Edition (New York, Daniel Adee, 1846), in Andrew Motte's English translation
provenance: |
  A copy held by the University of California, Berkeley, Mathematics-Statistics Library
  (call number QA803 .A4 1846, barcode C037272162), digitised by the Internet Archive.
  The file's encoding and page count suggest archive.org item newtonspmathema00newtrich,
  contributed by the University of California Libraries; Berkeley's record for the same
  call number is archive.org item 100878576. This file was not taken from archive.org
  directly. It was downloaded from a Princeton University course page,
  https://web.math.princeton.edu/~eprywes/F22FRS/newtonprincipia.pdf
acquisition: |
  Downloaded on 1 November 2026 from the Princeton address above, as recorded in the
  file's download metadata. Deposited exactly as downloaded, without re-encoding,
  cropping or OCR. 52,514,825 bytes, SHA-256
  4e77cefbcdec22085a815ccfa3bde665af135cf5fb7ccb0c6047f46c851c65ff.
chainOfCustody: |
  Printed in New York in 1846. A handwritten inscription records the copy as a gift to
  the "Math Dept." It was held by Berkeley's Mathematics-Statistics Library, later the
  Astronomy/Mathematics/Statistics Library in 100 Evans Hall, as a non-circulating book,
  with due-date stamps from 1992 to 1999 and a handwritten rebinding note. The Internet
  Archive scanned it. A copy of that scan was hosted on a Princeton University course
  page, from which it was downloaded for this archive.
knownGaps: |
  The scan was not checked page by page. The title page, front matter and closing index
  are present, and the printed pagination runs to 581. The PDF has 594 pages against 600
  images in the Internet Archive record, so a few images, probably blank or calibration
  pages, may be absent. Library stamps, perforations and handwriting belong to the
  scanned copy; the donor's name in the gift inscription is not confidently legible. Any
  text layer in the PDF has not been checked for accuracy. Which Internet Archive item
  this file derives from is inferred, not confirmed by comparing checksums.
tier: secondary_compilation
notPeerReviewed: true
submitter: anonymous
---

> This material has not been subjected to the scientific method and has not been peer reviewed. It is compiled from other sources; verify those sources independently.

Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica was first published in Latin
in London in 1687. It set out the three laws of motion and the law of universal
gravitation, and derived from them the motions of the planets, the moon and the tides.

This record preserves a scan of the first American edition, published in New York by
Daniel Adee in 1846. It reproduces Andrew Motte's English translation of 1729, revised and
corrected for this edition, together with Newton's System of the World and a life of
Newton by N. W. Chittenden, who dedicated the edition to the teachers of the Normal School
of the State of New York.

The scanned copy belonged to the University of California, Berkeley. Its library stamps,
handwritten inscription and circulation slip are part of what is preserved here. Readers
relying on the text should compare it with the Latin original and with modern
translations: Motte's translation and the 1846 revisions are interpretations of Newton's
words, not the words themselves.

---

Submission ID: e7067f18425ecd46fff3469db953340e7bf548da1af54e8f1cf00088f4ce6ace
Submitted: 2026-11-01T17:29:30.170Z
Submitter name is self-reported and has not been verified.