Philosophia naturalis ex authoribus extracta per dominum

This leather-bound volume contains a manuscript copy of Charles Morton’s Compendium Physicae copied by Harvard student Obadiah Ayer in 1708. The volume has text and drawings (including one large foldout drawing), and there is an index to the chapters at the end of the volume. Mather Byles (Harvard Class of 1725) also used the book.

Carolum Mortonum.

Received September 9, 1836 as the gift of the Rev. T. M. Harris, DD. Another academic notebook by Obadiah Ayer is held by the Harvard University Archives (HUC 8707.370).

"Obadiah Ayer, his book, Anno 1707" written on first page. "M. Byles" written above the title page.

Obadiah Ayer, a Massachusetts schoolmaster and chaplain, was born in Haverhill, Mass. on May 9, 1689. He received an AB from Harvard in 1710 and an AM in 1713. He was as a schoolmaster in Salem before serving as chaplain of Castle William from 1718 until 1723. Ayer died in 1768.

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. Morton 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 he was not appointed President, Morton 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. He 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.