calculations he had made, and suggested to Napier the advantages
that would result from the choice of 10 as a base, an improvement
which he had explained in his lectures at Gresham College, and
on which he had written to Napier. Napier said that he had
already thought of the change, and pointed out a further improvement,
viz., that the characteristics of numbers greater
than unity should be positive and not negative, as suggested by
Briggs. In 1616 Briggs again visited Napier and showed him the
work he had accomplished, and, he says, he would gladly have
paid him a third visit in 1617 had Napier’s life been spared.
Briggs’s Logarithmorum chilias prima, which contains the first published table of decimal or common logarithms, is only a small octavo tract of sixteen pages, and gives the logarithms of numbers from unity to 1000 to 14 places of decimals. It was published, probably privately, in 1617, after Napier’s death,[1] and there is no author’s name, place or date. The date of publication is, however, fixed as 1617 by a letter from Sir Henry Bourchier to Usher, dated December 6, 1617, containing the passage—“Our kind friend, Mr Briggs, hath lately published a supplement to the most excellent tables of logarithms, which I presume he has sent to you.” Briggs’s tract of 1617 is extremely rare, and has generally been ignored or incorrectly described. Hutton erroneously states that it contains the logarithms to 8 places, and his account has been followed by most writers. There is a copy in the British Museum.
Briggs continued to labour assiduously at the calculation of logarithms, and in 1624 published his Arithmetica logarithmica, a folio work containing the logarithms of the numbers from l to 20,000, and from 90,000 to 100,000 (and in some copies to 101,000) to 14 places of decimals. The table occupies 300 pages, and there is an introduction of 88 pages relating to the mode of calculation, and the applications of logarithms.
There was thus left a gap between 20,000 and 90,000, which was filled up by Adrian Vlacq (or Ulaccus), who published at Gouda, in Holland, in 1628, a table containing the logarithms of the numbers from unity to 100,000 to 10 places of decimals. Having calculated 70,000 logarithms and copied only 30,000, Vlacq would have been quite entitled to have called his a new work. He designates it, however, only a second edition of Briggs’s Arithmetica logarithmica, the title running Arithmetica logarithmica sive Logarithmorum Chiliades centum, ... editio secunda aucta per Adrianum Vlacq, Goudanum. This table of Vlacq’s was published, with an English explanation prefixed, at London in 1631 under the title Logarithmicall Arithmetike ... London, printed by George Miller, 1631. There are also copies with the title-page and introduction in French and in Dutch (Gouda, 1628).
Briggs had himself been engaged in filling up the gap, and in a letter to John Pell, written after the publication of Vlacq’s work, and dated October 25, 1628, he says:—
“My desire was to have those chiliades that are wantinge betwixt 20 and 90 calculated and printed, and I had done them all almost by my selfe, and by some frendes whom my rules had sufficiently informed, and by agreement the busines was conveniently parted amongst us; but I am eased of that charge and care by one Adrian Vlacque, an Hollander, who hathe done all the whole hundred chiliades and printed them in Latin, Dutche and Frenche, 1000 bookes in these 3 languages, and hathe sould them almost all. But he hathe cutt off 4 of my figures throughout; and hathe left out my dedication, and to the reader, and two chapters the 12 and 13, in the rest he hath not varied from me at all.”
The original calculation of the logarithms of numbers from unity to 101,000 was thus performed by Briggs and Vlacq between 1615 and 1628. Vlacq’s table is that from which all the hundreds of tables of logarithms that have subsequently appeared have been derived. It contains of course many errors, which were gradually discovered and corrected in the course of the next two hundred and fifty years.
The first calculation or publication of Briggian or common logarithms of trigonometrical functions was made in 1620 by Edmund Gunter, who was Briggs’s colleague as professor of astronomy in Gresham College. The title of Gunter’s book, which is very scarce, is Canon triangulorum, and it contains logarithmic sines and tangents for every minute of the quadrant to 7 places of decimals.
The next publication was due to Vlacq, who appended to his logarithms of numbers in the Arithmetica logarithmica of 1628 a table giving log sines, tangents and secants for every minute of the quadrant to 10 places; these were obtained by calculating the logarithms of the natural sines, &c. given in the Thesaurus mathematicus of Pitiscus (1613).
During the last years of his life Briggs devoted himself to the calculation of logarithmic sines, &c. and at the time of his death in 1631 he had all but completed a logarithmic canon to every hundredth of a degree. This work was published by Vlacq at his own expense at Gouda in 1633, under the title Trigonometria Britannica. It contains log sines (to 14 places) and tangents (to 10 places), besides natural sines, tangents and secants, at intervals of a hundredth of a degree. In the same year Vlacq published at Gouda his Trigonometria artificialis, giving log sines and tangents to every 10 seconds of the quadrant to 10 places. This work also contains the logarithms of numbers from unity to 20,000 taken from the Arithmetica logarithmica of 1628. Briggs appreciated clearly the advantages of a centesimal division of the quadrant, and by dividing the degree into hundredth parts instead of into minutes, made a step towards a reformation in this respect, and but for the appearance of Vlacq’s work the decimal division of the degree might have become recognized, as is now the case with the corresponding division of the second. The calculation of the logarithms not only of numbers but also of the trigonometrical functions is therefore due to Briggs and Vlacq; and the results contained in their four fundamental works—Arithmetica logarithmica (Briggs), 1624; Arithmetica logarithmica (Vlacq), 1628; Trigonometria Britannica (Briggs), 1633; Trigonometria artificialis (Vlacq), 1633—have not been superseded by any subsequent calculations.
In the preceding paragraphs an account has been given of the actual announcement of the invention of logarithms and of the calculation of the tables. It now remains to refer in more detail to the invention itself and to examine the claims of Napier and Briggs to the capital improvement involved in the change from Napier’s original logarithms to logarithms to the base 10.
The Descriptio contained only an explanation of the use of the logarithms without any account of the manner in which the canon was constructed. In an “Admonitio” on the seventh page Napier states that, although in that place the mode of construction should be explained, he proceeds at once to the use of the logarithms, “ut praelibatis prius usu, et rei utilitate, caetera aut magis placeant posthac edenda, aut minus saltem displiceant silentio sepulta.” He awaits therefore the judgment and censure of the learned “priusquam caetera in lucem temerè prolata lividorum detrectationi exponantur”; and in an “Admonitio” on the last page of the book he states that he will publish the mode of construction of the canon “si huius inventi usum eruditis gratum fore intellexero.” Napier, however, did not live to keep this promise. In 1617 he published a small work entitled Rabdologia relating to mechanical methods of performing multiplications and divisions, and in the same year he died.
The proposed work was published in 1619 by Robert Napier, his second son by his second marriage, under the title Mirifici logarithmorum canonis constructio.... It consists of two pages of preface followed by sixty-seven pages of text. In the preface Robert Napier says that he has been assured from undoubted authority that the new invention is much thought of by the ablest mathematicians, and that nothing would delight them more than the publication of the mode of construction of the canon. He therefore issues the work to satisfy their desires, although, he states, it is manifest that it would have seen the light in a far more perfect state if his father could have put the finishing touches to it; and he mentions that, in the opinion of the best judges, his father possessed, among other most excellent gifts, in the highest degree the power of
- ↑ It was certainly published after Napier’s death, as Briggs mentions his “librum posthumum.” This liber posthumus was the Constructio referred to later in this article.
