given over to the charge of his maternal grandmother. While still a boy
at school, his mechanical genius began to show itself, and he
constructed various mechanisms, including a windmill, a water-clock, and
a carriage put in motion by the person who sat in it. He was also fond
of drawing, and wrote verses. Even at this age he began to take an
interest in astronomy. In the yard of the house where he lived he traced
the varying movements of the sun upon the walls of the buildings, and by
means of fixed pins he marked out the hourly and half-hourly
subdivisions.

At the age of fifteen his mother took him from school, and sent him to
manage the farm and country business at Woolsthorpe, but farming and
marketing did not interest him, and he showed such a passion for study
that eventually he was sent back to school to prepare for Cambridge.

In the year 1660 Newton was admitted into Trinity College, Cambridge.
His attention was first turned to the study of mathematics by a desire
to inquire into the truth of judicial astrology, and he is said to have
discovered the folly of that study by erecting a figure with the aid of
one or two of the problems in Euclid. The propositions contained in
Euclid he regarded as self-evident; and, without any preliminary study,
he made himself master of Descartes' "Geometry" by his genius and
patient application. Dr. Wallis's "Arithmetic of Infinites," Sanderson's
"Logic," and the "Optics" of Kepler, were among the books which he
studied with care; and he is reported to have found himself more deeply
versed in some branches of knowledge than the tutor who directed his
studies.

In 1665 Newton took his Bachelor of Arts degree, and in 1666, in
consequence of the breaking out of the plague, he retired to