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,—
The Philosophic Grammar, being a View of the Present State of Experimental Physiology, or Natural Philosophy, 1735, 8vo; A New, Complete, and Universal System of Decimal Arithmetic, 1735, 8vo; The Young Student's Memorial Book, or Patent Library, 1735, 8vo; Description and Use of both the Globes, the Auxiliary Sphere, and Orrery, 1736, in 2 vols. 8vo; Memoirs of the Academy of Paris, 1740, in 5 vols.; System of the Newtonian Philosophy, 1759, in 3 vols.; New Elements of Optics, 1759; Mathematical Institutions, viz., Arithmetic, Algebra, Geometry, Trigonometry, and Fluxions, 1759; Natural History of England, with a Map of each County, 1759, in 2 vols.; Philology and Philosophical Geography, 1759; Mathematical Institutions, 1764, in 2 vols.; Lives of Philosophers, their Inventions, &c., 1764; Introduction to the Newtonian Philosophy, 1765; Institutions of Astronomical Calculations, in 2 parts, 1765; Description and Use of the Air-Pump, 1765; Description of the Torricellian Barometer, 1766; Appendix to the Description and Use of the Globes, 1766; Philosophia Britannica, 1778, in 3 vols.; Gentleman and Lady's Philosophy, in 3 vols.; Miscellaneous Correspondence, in 4 vols.; System of Philosophy; Philosophical Geography; Magazine, complete in 14 vols.; Principles of Pump-work; Theory of the Hydrometer; and Doctrine of Logarithms.