Vincent Wing

Vincent Wing (1619–1668) was an English astrologer and astronomer, professionally a land surveyor.

Vincent Wing was born at North Luffenham, Rutland on 9 April 1619. The eldest of four sons of Vincent Wing (1587–1660) (who was taking astronomical observations during the 1620s), his family had been established in the village since at least his grandfather's time, but is thought to have had Welsh antecedents. Wing did not receive a university education, but by assiduous study acquired his working knowledge of Latin, Greek, and Mathematics. With these skills he followed his calling as a surveyor, and invented or developed the use of the forty-link two-pole chain for measuring tracts of land in rods or poles, a method which he explained and advocated in his published works. While so engaged, two of his younger brothers, Solomon (1621) and Samuel (1626), married during the earlier 1640s and began their families, but the first of Vincent's children by his wife Alice to be christened at North Luffenham was Elizabeth, in November 1652.

During this time Wing collaborated with William Leybourn (1626–1716), and dated the preface to their jointly-authored work Urania Practica, (published in 1649) from North Luffenham in 1648. Containing over 300 pages, this was the first substantial compendium of astronomy written in the English language. It was the commencement of important authorial careers in surveying and astronomy for both men. In the following year Wing published independently A Dreadful Prognostication, containing astrological predictions. However several of Wing's later publications were made through the press of Robert Leybourn, who went into partnership with William Leybourn in 1651. The first of these, Wing's Harmonicon Cœleste, appeared in 1651 at a time when Wing was in correspondence with William Lilly: a surviving copy of the book from the library of Sir Isaac Newton was carefully annotated by its owner. In this work Wing had made a transition towards more modern astronomical conceptions. At the Leybourn press William Leybourn produced his own first enduring and substantial work, The Compleat Surveyor, in 1653: the association with Wing persisted until Wing's death.

Wing's next major work, his Astronomia Instaurata, appeared in 1656. This led to a controversy with Thomas Streete, who published his Astronomia Carolina in 1661, and followed it with An Appendix to Astronomia Carolina in 1664 in which he criticised Wing for his mistakes. In 1665 Wing responded in his Examen Astronomiae Carolina, exposing the alleged errors of Thomas Street, who retaliated with Examen examinatum of 1667, 'a castigation of the envy and ignorance of Vincent Wing.'

...
Wikipedia