In the time of Alexander comets were supposed by the majority of the Greek philosophers to be merely meteors generated in our atmosphere.  During the middle ages, persons, without giving themselves much concern about the nature of those bodies, supposed them to prognosticate sinister events.  Regiomontanus and Tycho Brahe proved by their observations that they are situate beyond the moon; Hevelius, Doerfel, &c., made them revolve around the sun; Newton established that they move under the immediate influence of the attractive force of that body, that they do not describe right lines, that, in fact, they obey the laws of Kepler.  It was necessary, then, to prove that the orbits of comets are curves which return into themselves, or that the same comet has been seen on several distinct occasions.  This discovery was reserved for Halley.  By a minute investigation of the circumstances connected with the apparitions of all the comets to be met with in the records of history, in ancient chronicles, and in astronomical annals, this eminent philosopher was enabled to prove that the comets of 1682, of 1607, and of 1531, were in reality so many successive apparitions of one and the same body.

This identity involved a conclusion before which more than one astronomer shrunk.  It was necessary to admit that the time of a complete revolution of the comet was subject to a great variation, amounting to as much as two years in seventy-six.

Were such great discordances due to the disturbing action of the planets?

The answer to this question would introduce comets into the category of ordinary planets or would exclude them for ever.  The calculation was difficult:  Clairaut discovered the means of effecting it.  While success was still uncertain, the illustrious geometer gave proof of the greatest boldness, for in the course of the year 1758 he undertook to determine the time of the following year when the comet of 1682 would reappear.  He designated the constellations, nay the stars, which it would encounter in its progress.

This was not one of those remote predictions which astrologers and others formerly combined very skilfully with the tables of mortality, so that they might not be falsified during their lifetime:  the event was close at hand.  The question at issue was nothing less than the creation of a new era in cometary astronomy, or the casting of a reproach upon science, the consequences of which it would long continue to feel.

Clairaut found by a long process of calculation, conducted with great skill, that the action of Jupiter and Saturn ought to have retarded the movement of the comet; that the time of revolution compared with that immediately preceding, would be increased 518 days by the disturbing action of Jupiter, and 100 days by the action of Saturn, forming a total of 618 days, or more than a year and eight months.