numbers up to 1000, and log sines and tangents from Gunter’s
Canon (1620). In the following year, 1626, Denis Henrion
published at Paris a Traicté des Logarithmes, containing Briggs’s
logarithms of numbers up to 20,001 to 10 places, and Gunter’s
log sines and tangents to 7 places for every minute. In the same
year de Decker also published at Gouda a work entitled Nieuwe
Telkonst, inhoudende de Logarithmi voor de Ghetallen beginnende
van 1 tot 10,000, which contained logarithms of numbers up to
10,000 to 10 places, taken from Briggs’s Arithmetica of 1624, and
Gunter’s log sines and tangents to 7 places for every minute.[1]
Vlacq rendered assistance in the publication of this work, and
the privilege is made out to him.
The invention of logarithms and the calculation of the earlier tables form a very striking episode in the history of exact science, and, with the exception of the Principia of Newton, there is no mathematical work published in the country which has produced such important consequences, or to which so much interest attaches as to Napier’s Descriptio. The calculation of tables of the natural trigonometrical functions may be said to have formed the work of the last half of the 16th century, and the great canon of natural sines for every 10 seconds to 15 places which had been calculated by Rheticus was published by Pitiscus only in 1613, the year before that in which the Descriptio appeared. In the construction of the natural trigonometrical tables Great Britain had taken no part, and it is remarkable that the discovery of the principles and the formation of the tables that were to revolutionize or supersede all the methods of calculation then in use should have been so rapidly effected and developed in a country in which so little attention had been previously devoted to such questions.
For more detailed information relating to Napier, Briggs and Vlacq, and the invention of logarithms, the reader is referred to the life of Briggs in Ward’s Lives of the Professors of Gresham College (London, 1740); Thomas Smith’s Vitae quorundam eruditissimorum et illustrium virorum (Vita Henrici Briggii) (London, 1707); Mark Napier’s Memoirs of John Napier already referred to, and the same author’s Naperi libri qui supersunt (1839); Hutton’s History; de Morgan’s article already referred to; Delambre’s Histoire de l’Astronomie moderne; the report on mathematical tables in the Report of the British Association for 1873; and the Philosophical Magazine for October and December 1872 and May 1873. It may be remarked that the date usually assigned to Briggs’s first visit to Napier is 1616 and not 1615 as stated above, the reason being that Napier was generally supposed to have died in 1618; but it was shown by Mark Napier that the true date is 1617.
In the years 1791–1807 Francis Maseres published at London, in six volumes quarto “Scriptores Logarithmici, or a collection of several curious tracts on the nature and construction of logarithms, mentioned in Dr Hutton’s historical introduction to his new edition of Sherwin’s mathematical tables ...,” which contains reprints of Napier’s Descriptio of 1614, Kepler’s writings on logarithms (1624–1625), &c. In 1889 a translation of Napier’s Constructio of 1619 was published by Walter Rae Macdonald. Some valuable notes are added by the translator, in one of which he shows the accuracy of the method employed by Napier in his calculations, and explains the origin of a small error which occurs in Napier’s table. Appended to the Catalogue is a full and careful bibliography of all Napier’s writings, with mention of the public libraries, British and foreign, which possess copies of each. A facsimile reproduction of Bartholomew Vincent’s Lyons edition (1620) of the Constructio was issued in 1895 by A. Hermann at Paris (this imprint occurs on page 62 after the word “Finis”).
It now remains to notice briefly a few of the more important events in the history of logarithmic tables subsequent to the original calculations.
Common or Briggian Logarithms of Numbers.—Nathaniel Roe’s Tabulae logarithmicae (1633) was the first complete seven-figure table that was published. It contains seven-figure logarithms of numbers from 1 to 100,000, with characteristics unseparated from the mantissae, and was formed from Vlacq’s table (1628) by leaving out the last three figures. All the figures of the number are given at the head of the columns, except the last two, which run down the extreme columns—1 to 50 on the left-hand side, and 50 to 100 on the right-hand side. The first four figures of the logarithms are printed at the top of the columns. There is thus an advance half way towards the arrangement now universal in seven-figure tables. The final step was made by John Newton in his Trigonometria Britannica (1658), a work which is also noticeable as being the only extensive eight-figure table that until recently had been published; it contains logarithms of sines, &c., as well as logarithms of numbers.
In 1705 appeared the original edition of Sherwin’s tables, the first of the series of ordinary seven-figure tables of logarithms of numbers and trigonometrical functions such as are in general use now. The work went through several editions during the 18th century, and was at length superseded in 1785 by Hutton’s tables, which continued in successive editions to maintain their position for a century.
In 1717 Abraham Sharp published in his Geometry Improv’d the Briggian logarithms of numbers from 1 to 100, and of primes from 100 to 1100, to 61 places; these were copied into the later editions of Sherwin and other works.
In 1742 a seven-figure table was published in quarto form by Gardiner, which is celebrated on account of its accuracy and of the elegance of the printing. A French edition, which closely resembles the original, was published at Avignon in 1770.
In 1783 appeared at Paris the first edition of François Callet’s tables, which correspond to those of Hutton in England. These tables, which form perhaps the most complete and practically useful collection of logarithms for the general computer that has been published, passed through many editions.
In 1794 Vega published his Thesaurus logarithmorum completus, a folio volume containing a reprint of the logarithms of numbers from Vlacq’s Arithmetica logarithmica of 1628, and Trigonometria artificialis of 1633. The logarithms of numbers are arranged as in an ordinary seven-figure table. In addition to the logarithms reprinted from the Trigonometria, there are given logarithms for every second of the first two degrees, which were the result of an original calculation. Vega devoted great attention to the detection and correction of the errors in Vlacq’s work of 1628. Vega’s Thesaurus has been reproduced photographically by the Italian government. Vega also published in 1797, in 2 vols. 8vo, a collection of logarithmic and trigonometrical tables which has passed through many editions, a very useful one volume stereotype edition having been published in 1840 by Hülsse. The tables in this work may be regarded as to some extent supplementary to those in Callet.
If we consider only the logarithms of numbers, the main line of descent from the original calculation of Briggs and Vlacq is Roe, John Newton, Sherwin, Gardiner; there are then two branches, viz. Hutton founded on Sherwin and Callet on Gardiner, and the editions of Vega form a separate offshoot from the original tables. Among the most useful and accessible of modern ordinary seven-figure tables of logarithms of numbers and trigonometrical functions may be mentioned those of Bremiker, Schrön and Bruhns. For logarithms of numbers only perhaps Babbage’s table is the most convenient.[2]
In 1871 Edward Sang published a seven-figure table of logarithms of numbers from 20,000 to 200,000, the logarithms between 100,000 and 200,000 being the result of a new calculation. By beginning the table at 20,000 instead of at 10,000 the differences are halved in magnitude, while the number of them in a page is quartered. In this table multiples of the differences, instead of proportional parts, are given.[3] John Thomson of Greenock (1782–1855) made an independent calculation of logarithms of numbers up to 120,000 to 12 places of decimals, and his table has been used to verify the errata already found in Vlacq and Briggs by Lefort (see Monthly Not. R.A.S. vol. 34, p. 447). A table of ten-figure logarithms of numbers up to 100,009 was calculated by W. W. Duffield and published in the Report of the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey for 1895–1896 as Appendix 12, pp. 395–722. The results were compared with Vega’s Thesaurus (1794) before publication.
Common or Briggian Logarithms of Trigonometrical Functions.—The next great advance on the Trigonometria artificialis took place more than a century and a half afterwards, when Michael Taylor published in 1792 his seven-decimal table of log sines and tangents to every second of the quadrant; it was calculated by interpolation from the Trigonometria to 10 places and then contracted to 7. On account of the great size of this table, and for other reasons, it never
- ↑ In describing the contents of the works referred to, the language and notation of the present day have been adopted, so that for example a table to radius 10,000,000 is described as a table to 7 places, and so on. Also, although logarithms have been spoken of as to the base e, &c., it is to be noticed that neither Napier nor Briggs, nor any of their successors till long afterwards, had any idea of connecting logarithms with exponents.
- ↑ The smallest number of entries which are necessary in a table of logarithms in order that the intermediate logarithms may be calculable by proportional parts has been investigated by J. E. A. Steggall in the Proc. Edin. Math. Soc., 1892, 10, p. 35. This number is 1700 in the case of a seven-figure table extending to 100,000.
- ↑ Accounts of Sang’s calculations are given in the Trans. Roy. Soc. Edin., 1872, 26, p. 521, and in subsequent papers in the Proceedings of the same society.
