Ralph Greatorex was a mathematical instrument maker. He was an apprentice of London clockmaker Elias Allen

Elias Allen

Elias Allen was an English maker of sundials and scientific instruments.Allen was apprenticed to a London clockmaker in 1602, and after his master died established himself in a workshop beside St Clement Danes Church, the Strand...

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Greatorex is mentioned in John Aubrey

John Aubrey

John Aubrey FRS, was an English antiquary, natural philosopher and writer. He is perhaps best known as the author of the collection of short biographical pieces usually referred to as Brief Lives...

's Brief Lives

Brief Lives

Brief Lives is a collection of short biographies written by John Aubrey in the last decades of the seventeenth century. Aubrey initially began collecting biographical material to assist the Oxford scholar Anthony Wood, who was working on his own collection of biographies...

 as a great friend of William Oughtred

William Oughtred

William Oughtred was an English mathematician.After John Napier invented logarithms, and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales upon which slide rules are based, it was Oughtred who first used two such scales sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division; and he is...

 the mathematician. He is also briefly referred to in Aubrey's 'Natural History of Wilts', and in the 'Macclesfield Correspondence'. John Evelyn

John Evelyn

John Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...

 met Greatorex on 8 May 1656, and saw his 'excellent invention to quench fire.' His name appears in 'Pepys's Diary.' On 11 October 1660, when several engines were shown at work in St. James's Park

St. James's Park

St. James's Park is a 23 hectare park in the City of Westminster, central London - the oldest of the Royal Parks of London. The park lies at the southernmost tip of the St. James's area, which was named after a leper hospital dedicated to St. James the Less.- Geographical location :St. James's...

, 'above all the rest,' says Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys

Samuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...

, 'I liked that which Mr. Greatorex brought, which do carry up the water with a great deal of ease.'

On 24 October Pepys bought of Greatorex a drawing-pen, 'and he did show me the manner of the lamp-glasses which carry the light a great way, good to read in bed by, and I intend to have one of them. And we looked at his wooden jack in his chimney, that goes with the smoake, which indeed is very pretty.' On 9 June and 20 September, 1662 and 23 March 1663 ('this day Greatorex brought me a very pretty weather-glasse for heat and cold') Pepys met the inventor; the last entry, 23 May 1663, refers to his varnish, 'which appears every whit as good upon a stick which he hath done, as the Indian.'

As well as Pepys, Allen, Oughtred and Evelyn, others that Greatorex worked or corresponded with included Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education. He settled in England, where he married and died...

, Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...

, Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle

Robert Boyle FRS was a 17th century natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, and inventor, also noted for his writings in theology. He has been variously described as English, Irish, or Anglo-Irish, his father having come to Ireland from England during the time of the English plantations of...

, Edward Phillips

Edward Phillips

Edward Phillips , was an English author.-Life:He was the son of Edward Phillips of the crown office in chancery, and his wife Anne, only sister of John Milton, the poet. Edward Phillips the younger was born in the Strand, London. His father died in 1631, and Anne eventually married her husband's...

 and Jonas Moore

Jonas Moore

Sir Jonas Moore, FRS was an English mathematician, surveyor, Ordnance Officer and patron of astronomy. He participated in two of the most ambitious English civil engineering projects of the 17th century: the draining of the Great Level of the Fens and the building of the Mole at Tangier...

. He also attended meetings of the Royal Society

Royal Society

The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, is a learned society for science, and is possibly the oldest such society in existence. Founded in November 1660, it was granted a Royal Charter by King Charles II as the "Royal Society of London"...

, and did horticultural experiments at Arundel House

Arundel House

Arundel House was a town-house or palace located between the Strand and the Thames, near St Clement Danes.It was originally the town house of the Bishops of Bath and Wells, during the Middle Ages. In 1539 it was given to William Fitzwilliam, Earl of Southampton...

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