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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." Math & Mathematicians: The History of Math Discoveries around the World. 2 vols. U*X*L, 1999; John Napier Archived 8 September 2015 at the Wayback Machine The History of Computing Project; John Napier—Short biography and translation of work on logarithms Archived 28 December 2008 at the Wayback Machine; Intro to Spherical Trig.
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 ...
The first device, which by then was already popularly used and known as Napier's bones, was a set of rods inscribed with the multiplication table. Napier coined the word rabdology (from Greek ῥάβδος [rhabdos], rod and λόγoς [logos] calculation or reckoning) to describe this technique. The rods were used to multiply, divide and even ...
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 ...
An important property of base-10 logarithms, which makes them so useful in calculations, is that the logarithm of numbers greater than 1 that differ by a factor of a power of 10 all have the same fractional part. The fractional part is known as the mantissa. [b] Thus, log tables need only show the fractional part. Tables of common logarithms ...
1614 — John Napier publishes a table of Napierian logarithms in Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio, 1617 — Henry Briggs discusses decimal logarithms in Logarithmorum Chilias Prima, 1618 — John Napier publishes the first references to e in a work on logarithms.