'The Determination of Elliptic Orbits from Three Complete Observations.' Pp. 79-104 in: Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. IV, Part 2 [Memoirs 7-10].

First Edition. Entire volume offered. 223 pp; plates. Original printed wrappers, large 4to. Untrimmed. Spine somewhat worn, else Very Good. 'Gift of Cleveland Abbe' ink stamp on front wrapper. 'Josiah Willard Gibbs was one of the principal inventors of the modern system of vector analysis; his first publication using this was an 1889 paper on 'The Determination of Elliptic Orbits from Three Complete Observations.' Although astronomers quickly adopted the improvement that Gibbs made to the Gaussian method of orbit determination, they took much longer to adopt vectorial notation; the first significantly vectorial astronomical book was Paul Herget's 1945 The Computation of Orbits. This paper analyzes the reception of vectors among astronomers, with particular attention to Gibbs's paper and Gibbs's concerns' (Abstract of Matthew Frank's 'Gibbs's Vector Method for the Computation of Orbits', Third Biennial History of Astronomy Workshop, University of Notre Dame; on Notre Dame's Web site). While 'no real version of Gibbs' version of vector analysis took place until 1901 [Martin Klein in D.S.B. V: 391; full article 386-93],' this paper clearly represents a much earlier and still important statement on the subject, 12 years before Edwin B. Wilson published his celebrated Vector Analysis Founded Upon the Lectures of J. Willard Gibbs. This volume also includes: Elias LOOMIS, 'Contributions to Meteorology' (pp. 7-77; pls. 17-32); S. P. LANGLEY, 'The Temperature of the Moon' (pp. 105-212, pls. 1-26); W. K. BROOKS, 'On the Lucayan Indians' (pp. 213-223; pls. 1-12). A fine association, as the New York-born Abbe (1838-1916) was 'the first regular official weather forecaster of the U.S. Government (Nathan Reingold in D.S.B. I: 6). …