1632: Essen Steel by Eric Flint

had been extended to him. "Perhaps I can help you, Colette. Do you remember yesterday when you told me that you had prepared a manuscript on the mathematics of the future?"
    Colette nodded, her eyes suddenly bright.
    "Well, one of my friends is Samuel Hartlib. I think he would be interested in publishing such a manuscript. Samuel is endeavoring to be what is called an Intelligencer, someone who communicates new science and new ideas to others around Europe."
    "That would be fine," Colette said. "I want anyone to be free to copy my manuscript. And this would be the first of eleven. Do you think he would still be interested?"
    "I think so," Dury said, "although that might limit the number of copies that he decides to make. Don't you want any money for this?"
    Colette shook her head. "No, my purpose is to disseminate the knowledge as widely as possible, not to restrict it. And I am just the synthesizer. Most of this knowledge is easy to come by here in Grantville, if you know where to look."
    Dury smiled. "Well then, since I am headed to England tomorrow, perhaps I can place some copies in the right hands. How many do you have?"
    "Three plus the original." Colette reached into her desk and pulled out three large envelopes and handed them to Dury. "One is for Samuel Hartlib, one is to be mailed to Nicolas Peiresc, and the third to Marin Mersenne." Colette smiled. "I believe you know those gentlemen?"
    Dury gave a start of surprise. "How did you … "
    Colette grinned. "I was told that a messenger would come, John." She looked up at the ceiling and then back at Dury.
    Dury understood immediately. "Mysterious are the ways of God, Colette. Mysterious, indeed."
    Before he left, Colette Modi made him promise one thing. "Initially I want no one to know that I wrote these, John. So please promise me that only the name Crucibellus will be connected with these manuscripts. The address I have left in the manuscript is Inn of The Maddened Queen. That way many will assume it is simply a postal drop."
    Dury smiled. "I promise."
    Two months later John Dury was in London. It was there that he mailed a copy of Colette's manuscript to Marin Mersenne in Paris and Nicolas Peiresc in Aix-en-Provence. The third he took to Samuel Hartlib.
    * * *
    To say that the Crucibellus Manuscripts took the European mathematical community by storm would be a vast understatement. In early 1632 many Europeans were still unaware that something unusual had happened to their universe. Even those who had heard the tales of a community of Englishmen in Thuringia tended to discredit the idea unless they had actually traveled to Grantville themselves. But when the Crucibellus Manuscripts began circulating in 1632, people's minds began to change. It was not that all of the concepts were totally new and different. But it was the style and the breadth and the mystery which set intellectual circles abuzz. For Crucibellus had outlined the topics of future manuscripts and promised that each would appear at approximately three month intervals. Mathematical Symbology of the Future. Analytical Geometry. Differential Calculus. Integral Calculus. Differential Equations. Matrix Algebra. Probability. Statistics. Fractals. Special and General Relativity. Quantum Mechanics.
    The style was often brutally terse. While only the most essential concepts were given, the example problems in the manuscripts were explained in clear and exquisite detail and were often taken from problems the reader could imagine from everyday life.
    And then there were the challenge problems. Theorems unheard of. Problems never dreamt of. Problems no mathematician in the seventeenth century could solve, especially in the ninety days before the answer would appear in the next manuscript. The first challenge problem set the stage for the rest: Prove the existence of the Euler Line. That is, that the orthocenter, centroid, and circumcenter of any triangle must lie in a straight line, with the centroid exactly twice as