Dr Wilkins just responeded. (10-2-01) Here's the reply
sounds good, no? --E |
They all start with a line:
From `A Short Account of the History of Mathematics' (4th edition, 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball.
Are they fair game to grab as source material for our wikipedia? I know we are scarfing stuff from the 1911 encyclopedia, this is from 1908, so it should be under the same lack of restrictions....
As far as searching the copyright website goes, good luck. You'll need it. ;-) --KQ
I think we should be helping ALL Open Source / Public Domain sources here... especially when it helps us! But if that makes it complex, then...
Just my two small pieces of worthless metal ... Dave McKee
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.sounds good, no? --E