Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He also invented the so-called " Napier's bones " and made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics. Napier's birthplace, Merchiston Tower in Edinburgh , is now part of the facilities of Edinburgh Napier University .
The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, shortly after John Napier's publication of the concept of the logarithm. Edmund Gunter of Oxford developed a calculating device with a single logarithmic scale; with additional measuring tools it could be used to multiply and divide.
John Napier (1550–1617), the inventor of logarithms Title page of Napier's 1614 table of logarithms of trigonometric functions Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio The 19 degree pages from Napier's 1614 table. The left hand page covers angle increments of 0 to 30 minutes, the right hand page 30 to 60 minutes
Logarithms were introduced by John Napier in 1614 as a means of simplifying calculations. [1] They were rapidly adopted by navigators, scientists, engineers, surveyors, and others to perform high-accuracy computations more easily. Using logarithm tables, tedious multi-digit multiplication steps can be replaced by table look-ups and simpler ...
Napier's bones is a manually operated calculating device created by John Napier of Merchiston, Scotland for the calculation of products and quotients of numbers. The method was based on lattice multiplication, and also called rabdology, a word invented by Napier. Napier published his version in 1617. [1]
The term Napierian logarithm or Naperian logarithm, named after John Napier, is often used to mean the natural logarithm. Napier did not introduce this natural logarithmic function, although it is named after him. [1] [2] However, if it is taken to mean the "logarithms" as originally produced by Napier, it is a function given by (in terms of ...
Henry Briggs (1 February 1561 – 26 January 1630) was an English mathematician notable for changing the original logarithms invented by John Napier into common (base 10) logarithms, which are sometimes known as Briggsian logarithms in his honour.
In 1616 and 1617, Briggs visited John Napier at Edinburgh, the inventor of what are now called natural (base-e) logarithms, in order to suggest a change to Napier's logarithms. During these conferences, the alteration proposed by Briggs was agreed upon; and after his return from his second visit, he published the first chiliad of his logarithms.