ABSTRACT
Birchensha’s appearance at the Royal Society’s ordinary meeting at Gresham College on Thursday, 10 February 1675/6 provided an opportunity for him to demonstrate and explain his ‘Perfect and Compleat Scale of Musick’, a project that had occupied him on and off for more than a decade and which he intended to make a centrepiece of the ‘Mathematical Part’ of Syntagma musicæ. Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Society, subsequently sent accounts of the meeting to certain members, including Newton and Martin Lister, the physician and naturalist. Oldenburg’s letter to Newton, written on or about 12 February 1675/6, is unfortunately lost, but Newton’s reply from Cambridge, dated 15 February, survives. In his History of the Royal Society of London Dr Thomas Birch, the Society’s secretary, included edited but faithful transcripts of the minutes of this and other meetings from the period 1660–87.
