History of Rouse History of Mathematics

 Dear Sirs,
 
 My apologies for delaying overlong on the response to your e-mails
 regarding Rouse Ball's History of Mathematics.  My excuse is that
 they were sent to me in August, at a time when I was away from Dublin
 for a few months, and I never got round to the task of dealing fully
 with over a thousand e-mails that awaited me on my return.
 
 In reply to your specific query:
 
    Walter William Rouse Ball lived from 14 Aug 1850 to 4 April 1925.
 
 You will find these dates on the MacTutor History of Mathematics website,
 specifically at
 
    http://www-groups.dcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Ball.html
 
 You will note that Rouse Ball has been dead for over 70 years, and therefore
 his works would therefore have entered the public domain under EU copyright
 law and international copyright conventions.
 
 I have not recently made the effort to double-check these dates, through
 you should be able to find an entry for Rouse Ball in some dictionary of
 scientific biography.
 
 I do recall, though, that, when the duration of copyright was lengthened
 from 50 to 70 years after the death of the author, I did do my own check
 and found that Rouse Ball had been dead for just over 70 years; this
 would have been around 1995/6.
 
 The copy I have used has the following information on its title page:
 
       A SHORT ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS
       BY W. W. ROUSE BALL
       FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE
 
       FOURTH EDITION
 
       MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
       ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON
       1908
 
 and, over the page
 
     First Edition 1888.
     Second Edition 1893.
     Third Edition 1901.
     Fourth Edition 1908.
 
 Of course, with a book of this age, any copyright in the `typographical
 arrangement' under British and Irish copyright law would have lapsed
 long ago: such copyright lasts for at most 50 years (under the most
 recent Irish legislation), and in any case such copyright is only
 violated by `reprographic' copies, made for example with a photocopying
 machine, or photographically.
 
 If you are intending to quote, I seriously advise you to consult a
 printed text, to ensure accuracy of the quote.  You might note that
 the edition that I have used has also been photographically reproduced
 by Dover Publications.
 
 Yours sincerely,
 
 Dr. David Wilkins,
 School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.