A reader named Nicholas passed along a great tip about a notebook from the collection of the Morgan Library: “Thought of Notebook Stories while reading this article on Isaac Newton’s teenage pocket notebook. Video at the top of the page has some amazing images of his notebook.”

The Morgan’s earliest acquisition related to the history of science came in 1907, when J. Pierpont Morgan purchased a small notebook kept by Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727) during his late teenage years. As one of four surviving notebooks that document Newton’s early schooling in Lincolnshire and university education at Trinity College, Cambridge, the pocket memorandum book affords considerable insight into the reading practices and intellectual preoccupations of Newton before he made his significant mathematical and scientific discoveries.

The video is here, with several images of the notebook: Sir Isaac Newton’s Teenage Parlor Tricks

You can read more about the notebook here, and zoom in on a PDF of all the pages: Sir Isaac Newton’s Pocket Memorandum Book

And back in 2013, I posted about one of Newton’s other notebooks: Isaac Newton’s Notebooks

Thank you Nicholas for sharing this fascinating notebook story!