Description

Daedalus Hyperboreus is the first Swedish scientific journal. It was edited by Emanuel Swedenborg with six issues in the years 1716 to 1718. The first edition had this long and descriptive title: DAEDALUS HYPERBOREUS or some new MATHEMATICAL and PHYSICAL Experiments and Remarks which Well-Borne Mr. Assessor Polhammar and other Ingenious Persons in Sweden have made and now from time to time present for the common good. Christopher Polhammar (1661–1751), ennobled to Polhem in 1716, was an extremely productive inventor. He is most famous for his inventions of sluices, hoisting machines in mines, pumps and locks. Daidalos is a Greek mythologian inventor. Probably Polhem was one of Swedenborg’s candidates to be the Nordic Daidalos. In Daedalus Hyperboreus Swedenborg has described some of Polhem’s wonderful experiments and devices, very often completed with Swedenborg’s mathematical applications. Though there are several articles in the journal which are the results of Swedenborg’s own ideas, such as his invention of an aeroplane and his method to find the longitude at sea. This book is a translation of the Swedish edition of Daedalus Hyperboreus that was printed in 2018, 300 years after the last number of the journal, with plentiful comments by the historian of mathematics Staffan Rodhe. That which is now brought to the light of day is a fruit and like unto a firstborn of that correspondence which some learned men and lovers of the mathematical sciences in Upsala have carried on with our Swedish Archimedes Mr Assessor Christopher Polhammar. —Emanuel Swedenborg, Preface “For those who are interested in history of science Daedalus Hyperboreus is a fascinating reading.” —Upsala Nya Tidning