Author:
Edward Cocker [Edoardus Coccerius] (1631-1676), English calligrapher, engraver and arithmetician (‘Philomath’), whose name became proverbial because of a work of arithmetic attributed to him
Publication details:
Without date or place. [London, mid-seventeenth century.]
See his entry in the Oxford DNB. He published two dozen works on calligraphy, and Pepys described him as ‘the famous writing-master’, and employed him to engrave his slide rule, but it is as an arithmetician that he is remembered: two works published shortly after his death, purportedly from his manuscript, gave rise to the expression ‘according to Cocker’. It has not been established which one of Cocker’s works the present item comes from (his earliest, ‘Pen’s Experience’, is lost). In black ink on one side of a 17 x 11 cm piece of laid paper.
