Arithmetic scale - Blair's point of view

John Blair published a Chronology and History of the World, from the Creation to the Year of Christ 1753, which appeared in many subsequent editions and was widely used as a source, including by Priestley for his Chart of Biography of 1765.

Title page of Blair’s Chronology (1779 edition).

Collection of Stephen Boyd Davis. Photo: Stephen Boyd Davis

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Blair praised Helvicus’ approach (see previous post), which used equal intervals of space for equal intervals of time, contrasting it with those whose ‘chief Aim seems to have been pointed, to the contracting History into a little Room as they could’. 

The Tables of Helvicus, which were publish’d in 1629, are what approach the nearest to the Plan of the present Work, and have been generally preferr’d by Men of Learning to all the rest; because they give a more united View of the Collateral Succession of different Kingdoms. Whereas the more Modern Tables of Talent, Marshal, Fresnoy, and those composed by an Anonymous Author from Petavius, have all of them made one great and fundamental Mistake. For their chief Aim seems to have been pointed, to the contracting History into a little Room as they could, by which they have lost the true Connection and Union of its Parts, which can never be preserved, without expanding them, according to the Series of single Years;  and we therefore venture to affirm, that this Principle is the most essential, in the Texture of a Chronological Table. For it is in Chronology as in Musick, where the Harmony does not arise, from any single Note, or from any Number of Notes, but from their properly proportioned and tuned to each other; where, without the exact Disposition of Time and Place, the true Union of Concert is broken, and the best Musick may become Discord.

Although Blair’s Chronology is a Table rather than a true Chronographic, his idea of the value of ‘a more united View of the Collateral Succession of different Kingdoms’ is important for future developments. It emphasises the idea of a visual whole in which the synchronisation of events may be directly seen.

Double page of Blair’s Chronology (1779 edition).

Collection of Stephen Boyd Davis. Photo: Stephen Boyd Davis

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Detail of Blair’s Chronology (1779 edition).

The tables are engraved, rather than letterpress. Near the centre of this view is the death of Alexander Pope. 

Collection of Stephen Boyd Davis. Photo: Stephen Boyd Davis

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