Desaguliers was elected to the Royal Society of London in 1714 as experimental assistant to Isaac Newton and he later popularised Newtonian theories and their practical applications in public lectures as well as his written works. By the time of his death he had given over 140 courses on mechanics, hydrostatics, pneumatics, optics and astronomy. “The two-volume set promotes the Newtonian tradition and quotes experiments that confirmed Newton’s queries, especially from the Opticks. Desaguliers also describes a number of electrical experiments and contributes to the popularization of the study of electricity. Each volume contains six lectures, richly illustrated by experiments and annotated. The second volume deals mostly with applied science and engineering.”—Norman.
Norman, Bibliotheca Mechanica, p. 91; DSB, IV, pp. 43-5; Wellcome II, p. 451 (vol. 2 only); Poggendorff I, pp. 553-5.