"The idea of the logarithm probably had its source in the use of... trigonometric formulas that transformed multiplication into addition and subtraction. ...[I]f one needed to solve a triangle using the , a multiplication and division were required. ...[C]alculations were long and errors... made. Astronomers realized... multiplication and division could be replaced by additions and subtractions. To accomplish this... sixteenth century astronomers used formulas... as 2 \sin \alpha \sin \beta = cos(\alpha - \beta) - \cos (\alpha + \beta). ...A second source of the... logarithm was probably found in... algebraists as Stifel and Chuquet, who both displayed tables relating the powers of 2 to the exponents and showed that multiplication in one table corresponded to addition in the other. But because these tables had large gaps, they could not be used for necessary calculations. ...[T]wo men... independently, the Scot John Napier... and the Swiss Jobst Bürgi... came up with the idea of producing an extensive table... to multiply any... numbers... (not just powers of 2)... Napier published... first."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
, A History of Mathematics: An Introduction (1993, 1998)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jost_B%C3%BCrgi
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Jost Bürgi
79 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Jost Bürgi →
Related Quotes
"[D]ue to a lack of languages, the door to... authors has not always been open to me, as... to others, I have had to f…"
"Divide a right angle in as many parts as you want and construct herefrom the sine table. (Einen rechten Winckell in a…"
"In such a way, with much trouble and labor, the whole Canon has been established. For many hundreds of years, up to n…"
"It would seem that J. Bürgi, independently of Napier, had constructed before 1611 a table of antilogarithms of a seri…"
"[I]n 1575 Western Europe had recovered most of the major mathematical works of antiquity now extant. Arabic algebra h…"
"Another treatise of Bürgi is... his algebraic work Coss... Coss is not restricted to algebra, but... treats the divis…"
"Napier was... the first... to publish.., but...it is possible that the idea of logarithms had occured to Bürgi as ear…"
"Jost Burgi, a Swiss clockmaker and mathematician, invented logarithms independently of Napier and Briggs, although it…"
"Joost Bürgi... a Swiss watch and instrument maker and an assisitant to Kepler in Prague was... interested in facilita…"
"The miserable fragment of miscalculated tables discovered by Kästner proves nothing, for there is neither description…"