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John Napier of Merchiston, nicknamed Marvellous Merchiston, was a Scottish landowner known as a mathematician, physicist, and astronomer. He was the 8th Laird of Merchiston. His Latinized name was Ioannes Neper.
1614 (MDCXIV) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Saturday of the Julian calendar, the 1614th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 614th year of the 2nd millennium, the 14th year of the 17th century, and the 5th year of the 1610s decade. As of the start of 1614, the Gregorian calendar was 10 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923.
Henry Briggs was an English mathematician notable for changing the original logarithms invented by John Napier into common logarithms, which are sometimes known as Briggsian logarithms in his honour. The specific algorithm for long division in modern use was introduced by Briggs c. 1600 AD.
Mathematical tables are lists of numbers showing the results of a calculation with varying arguments. Trigonometric tables were used in ancient Greece and India for applications to astronomy and celestial navigation, and continued to be widely used until electronic calculators became cheap and plentiful in the 1970s, in order to simplify and drastically speed up computation. Tables of logarithms and trigonometric functions were common in math and science textbooks, and specialized tables were published for numerous applications.
The year 1808 in science and technology involved some significant events, listed below.
The year 1788 in science and technology involved some significant events.
The year 1616 in science and technology involved some significant events.
The year 1614 in science and technology involved some significant events.
The year 1615 in science and technology involved some significant events.
Jost Bürgi, active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, mathematician, and writer.
Adriaan Vlacq (1600–1667) was a Dutch book publisher and author of mathematical tables. Born in Gouda, Vlacq published a table of logarithms from 1 to 100,000 to 10 decimal places in 1628 in his Arithmetica logarithmica. This table extended Henry Briggs' original tables which only covered the values 1-20,000 and 90,001 to 100,000. The new table was computed by Ezechiel de Decker and Vlacq who calculated and added 70,000 further values to complete the tables. This table was further extended by Jurij Vega in 1794, and by Alexander John Thompson in 1952.
Events from the year 1882 in Ireland.
The history of logarithms is the story of a correspondence between multiplication on the positive real numbers and addition on the real number line that was formalized in seventeenth century Europe and was widely used to simplify calculation until the advent of the digital computer. The Napierian logarithms were published first in 1614. E. W. Hobson called it "one of the very greatest scientific discoveries that the world has seen." Henry Briggs introduced common logarithms, which were easier to use. Tables of logarithms were published in many forms over four centuries. The idea of logarithms was also used to construct the slide rule, which became ubiquitous in science and engineering until the 1970s. A breakthrough generating the natural logarithm was the result of a search for an expression of area against a rectangular hyperbola, and required the assimilation of a new function into standard mathematics.
Events from the year 1868 in the United Kingdom.
Edward Wright was an English mathematician and cartographer noted for his book Certaine Errors in Navigation, which for the first time explained the mathematical basis of the Mercator projection by building on the works of Pedro Nunes, and set out a reference table giving the linear scale multiplication factor as a function of latitude, calculated for each minute of arc up to a latitude of 75°. This was in fact a table of values of the integral of the secant function, and was the essential step needed to make practical both the making and the navigational use of Mercator charts.
Napier is a surname with an English, Scottish, French or Polish origin.
John Craig was a Scottish physician and astronomer. He was physician to King James. He corresponded with Tycho Brahe, and associated with John Napier.
Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio and Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Constructio are two books in Latin by John Napier expounding the method of logarithms. While others had approached the idea of logarithms, notably Jost Bürgi, it was Napier who first published the concept, along with easily used precomputed tables, in his Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio.
Events from the year 1550 in the Kingdom of Scotland.
Events from the year 1828 in Scotland.
References
- ↑ "Henry Briggs". Encyclopædia Britannica . Retrieved 2014-09-25.