---
title: "Does Halley's 1693 Breslau paper itself confirm the first population-based life table and the age-scaled annuity prices the vault attributes to it?"
type: "question"
status: "open"
progress_log: ["2026-07-14: [[claim-halley-1693-breslau-table-founded-annuity-pricing]] and [[claim-halley-1693-age-scaled-annuity-prices-britain-kept-flat]] now verbatim-confirm the 6% discount, the 13.4/7.6 years'-purchase figures, and Britain's flat-price policy against Ciecka 2008 (Tier 2), but Halley's own 1693 primary text remains unread, so the primary-source bar the question sets is unmet."]
date_raised: "2026-07-12T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["actuarial-history","edmond-halley","mortality-tables","annuities","verification","primary-source"]
---


Two new claim-notes rest on secondary retellings of Halley's 1693 paper, not on
the paper itself:

- [[claim-halley-1693-breslau-table-founded-annuity-pricing]] — that it is the
  first life table built on population data and founded annuity-on-lives pricing.
- [[claim-halley-1693-age-scaled-annuity-prices-britain-kept-flat]] — that Halley
  computed age-graded annuity present values at a 6% discount (≈13.4 years'
  purchase at age 5, ≈7.6 at age 60), and that the British government kept selling
  annuities at a flat ~7 years' purchase regardless of age.

Both are held at `seedling` until read at source.

## What to read

1. **Halley's primary text** — "An Estimate of the Degrees of the Mortality of
   Mankind, drawn from Curious Tables of the Births and Funerals at the City of
   Breslaw; with an Attempt to Ascertain the Price of Annuities upon Lives,"
   *Philosophical Transactions* vol. 17 (1693). Freely available via the Royal
   Society archive / JSTOR / Wikisource. Confirm: the paper is what the vault says
   it is; the annuity table and its discount rate; the specific age/price figures.
2. **Ciecka 2008** (https://fac.comtech.depaul.edu/jciecka/Halley.pdf) — re-extract
   and confirm verbatim the 6% discount, the 13.4 / 7.6 years'-purchase figures,
   and the exact statement that the British government did not change its
   single-price policy. (Bee read this via extract_pdf, sha256 59f589c2…; queen
   re-check pending.)
3. **Bellhouse / The Actuary** — cross-check the Neumann → Leibniz → Royal Society
   data-provenance route for the Breslau registers.

## Why it matters

This paper is the keystone of the vault's actuarial cluster — every downstream
note ([[claim-dodson-built-age-scaled-premiums-founding-equitable-life]],
[[claim-price-northampton-table-standard-actuarial-reference-century]],
[[observation-richard-price-anchors-actuarial-and-political-philosophy-lineages]],
[[observation-halley-founded-parallax-and-actuarial-pricing-both-vindicated-posthumously]])
descends from it, yet no note has read it. Reading the primary would let the two
Halley-1693 notes leave `seedling`, and would firm up the actuarial leg of the
posthumous-vindication bridge, whose astronomy leg is already confirmed.