Compendium physicæ ex authoribus extractum, 1714

Manuscript copy of Charles Morton’s Compendium Physicae prepared by copyist Robert Ward in 1714. The leather-bound volume includes text and drawings, and there is an index to the chapters of the book at the end of the volume. "Thomas Greaves's book Octob 1 Anno Salutis 1714" inscribed on flyleaf. Thomas Greaves may refer to the Charlestown physician and judge and member of the Harvard Class of 1703.

Received as part of the bequest of the Honorable Thomas Hubbard, Treasurer of Harvard College, 1774.

Charles Morton, an educator and Harvard's first vice-president, was born in 1627 in Cornwall, England. He received his first degree in 1649 from Oxford University and received an MA in 1652. He established the Newington Green Academy near London and began compiling “systems” used as manuals for student study. He immigrated to Massachusetts in 1686 believing he would be appointed President of Harvard College. Though Morton was not appointed President, he taught as a fellow and the College began using his manuscript textbooks as part of the undergraduate course of study; Morton's Compendium Physicae was the College's official physics textbook into the 18th century. He was appointed a member of the Harvard Corporation and its first vice-president. Morton died in 1698.

The undergraduate students of Harvard College followed a structured program of study in the early 1700s. Certain key texts were adopted as textbooks at Harvard, and students often copied them into personal notebooks or paid professional copyists to copy them, in place of purchased books. Textbooks created by Harvard Tutors Henry Flynt and William Brattle, Instructor Judah Monis, and Fellow Charles Morton were among the earliest used in the colonies.