MARTIN, Benjamin, an eminent artist and mathematician, was born in 1704. After publishing a variety of ingenious treatises, and particularly a scientific magazine under his own name, and carrying on for many years an extensive trade as an optician and globe-maker in Fleet Street, the growing infirmities of age compelled him to withdraw from the active duties of business. Trusting too fatally to what he thought the integrity of others, he unfortunately (though with a capital more than sufficient to pay all his debts) became bankrupt. The unhappy old man, overpowered by this unexpected blow, attempted, in a moment of desperation, to destroy himself; and the wound he gave himself, though not immediately mortal, hastened his death, which happened on the 9th February 1782, in his seventy-eighth year. He had a valuable collection of fossils, and curiosities of almost every kind, which, after his death, were disposed of by auction. His principal publications are, 1. The Philosophic Grammar, being a view of the present state of Experimental Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, 1735, 8vo; 2. A New, Complete, and Universal System or Body of Decimal Arithmetic, 1735, 8vo; 3. The Young Student's Memorial Book, or Patent Library, 1735, 8vo; 4. Description and Use of both the Globes, the Armillary Sphere, and Orrery, 1736, in two vols. 8vo; 5. Memoirs of the Academy of Paris, 1740, in five vols.; 6.
System of the Newtonian Philosophy, 1759, in three vols.; 7. New Elements of Optics, 1759; 8. Mathematical Institutions, viz. Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Fluxions, 1759; 9. Natural History of England, with a Map of each County, 1759, in two vols.; 10. Philology and Philosophical Geography, 1759; 11. Mathematical Institutions, 1764, in two vols.; 12. Lives of Philosophers, their Inventions, &c. 1764; 13. Introduction to the Newtonian Philosophy, 1765; 14. Institutions of Astronomical Calculations, in two parts, 1765; 15. Description and Use of the Air Pump, 1766; 16. Description of the Torricellian Barometer, 1766; 17. Appendix to the Description and Use of the Globes, 1766; 18. Philosophia Britannica, 1778, in three vols.; 19. Gentleman and Lady's Philosophy, in three vols.; 20. Miscellaneous Correspondence, in four vols.; 21. System of Philology; 22. Philosophical Geography; 23. Magazine complete, in fourteen vols.; 24. Principles of Pump-work; 25. Theory of the Hydrometer; and, 26. Doctrine of Logarithms.