ABSTRACT
John Birchensha seems to have conceived the ‘Grand Scale’ as an elaborate chart. A simpler version probably existed as early as February 1662, when Samuel Pepys was invited to Birchensha’s house in Southwark and shown ‘his great Card of the body of Musique, which he cries up for a rare thing’. In his letter to the Royal Society of 26 April 1664 Birchensha declared his intention to ‘draw a grand System, which shall containe and comprehend the whole body of the Mathematical part of Musick’, and promised to present the Society’s library with a copy. John Pell served on several committees of the Society, including the one set up on 20 April 1664 to look into Birchensha’s proposals, was present at the meeting a week later when Birchensha’s letter of 26 April 1664 was read, and was a council member in 1675–1676 when Birchensha demonstrated his ‘Compleat Scale’ to the Society.
