Logarithmic tables

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Henry Briggs A table to find the height of the pole, the magnetical declination being given (Blundeville, 1602)

Wright and Briggs, Certaine errors in navigation (London, 1610)

John Napier, Mirifici Logarithmorium canonis descriptio (Edinburgh: Printed by Andrew Hart, 1614)

• 90 pages of tables

John Napier, A description of the admirable table of logarithms (trans. E. Wright) (London, 1616)

• used by navigators for exploration, East India Company

John Napier, Rabdologiae (1617)

• described calculating devices including numbering rods (Napier's Bones)

John Napier, Mirifici logarithmorum canonis constructio (1619)

• posthumously published by his son Robert, explaining tables in Descriptio

Henry Briggs, Logarithmorum chilias prima (privately printed, 1617)

• https://archive.org/details/bim_early-english-books-1475-1640_logarithmorum-chilias-pr_briggs-henry_1617
• extremely rare, 1 pages, earliest printed table to base 10
• Translation of preface in Jagger:
  • "Here is the first thousand logarithms which the author has had printed, not with the intention of becoming public property, but partly to satisfy on a private basis the wish of some of his own intimate friends: partly so that with its help he might more conveniently solve not only several following thousands but also the integral table of Logarithms used for the calculation of all triangles. For he has the Table of Sines, accurately drawn up from first elements by himself ten years earlier, through algebraic equations and differences, proportional to the actual sines instead of individual degrees and hundredths of degrees: this he hopes to publish, God willing, together with the appended logarithms, as soon as conveniently may be."

John Speidell, New logarithmes (1619)

• "

a book of tables derived directly from those in the Descriptio. This work, despite containing no explanation of the tables nor any worked examples, had gone through nine editions by 1627" (Jagger 69)

Edmund Gunter, Canon triangulorum sive tabulœ sinuum et tangentium arti�cialium ad radium 10000.0000 & ad scrupulum prima quadrantis (London: William Jones, 1620)

• "Gunter's table, like those of Napier, presents the logarithms of sines and tangents for every minute of the quadrant, semi-quadrantally arranged. These tables are to eight �gures, split into two groups of four by a vertical bar. Leading digits are omitted where these do not change from the line above. This may have been a deliberate device to render the page more readable, but it is not impossible that it is the result of a desire to economize on the use of type." (Jagger 62-3)

"In the years immediately following the publication of the Descriptio, these two works, Gunter's Canon triangulorum and Briggs's Logarithmorum chilias prima, established the techniques and conventions that were to underpin the two great canons of the next decade, the Arithmetica logarithmica and the Trigonometria Britannica." (Jagger 65)

Henry Briggs, Arithmetica Logarithmica (London, 1624)

• http://locomat.loria.fr contains a reconstruction of this table
• logarithms of 30k natural numbers to 14 decimal places

Adrian Vlacque, Arithmetica logarithmica" (1628)

• published the completed canon to 10 digits

Briggs (posthumous), Trigonometria Britannica (Gouda, 1633)

• Gellibrand succeeded Briggs as professor of astronomy at Gresham College; published tables Briggs worked out
• http://locomat.loria.fr contains a reconstruction of this table

"Briggs's two great works, the Arithmetica logarithmica and the Trigonometria Britannica, formed the basis of all logarithm tables published for the next 200 years or so. It was not until the end of the eighteenth century that any further calculation of logarithms took place." (Jagger 66)

"But logarithms to base 10, as set forth by Briggs in the Arithmetica logarithmica and Trigonometrica Britannica, were not at once readily accessible to the student and practitioner. These two works were large, relatively expensive and written in Latin, and were, perhaps, destined more for the coffee table than the working library. There was a need for smaller and cheaper volumes, written in English. One of the earliest writers who sought to �ll this gap was John Newton (1621–1678). During the Interregnum Newton, a staunch Royalist, taught mathematics in Oxford and in the years 1654 to 1660 wrote eight books, all of them in English, on arithmetic, geometry, trigonometry, and astronomy. Five of these volumes have a signi�cant tabular content: tables of logarithms of the natural numbers and of angular functions and their logarithms, all of them explicitly derived from those of Briggs." (Jagger 69-70)

Oughtred, Trigonometria (London: Joseph Moxon, 1657)

• "Undoubtedly the typesetting of the tabular portion of the Trigonometria was Moxon's pièce de résistance, but something had gone badly wrong in the process of its production, and a second edition of the book, this time in English, was rushed out within months of the �rst." (Jagger 71)
• "It is clear that it was Oughtred's intention that the tables of logarithms of sines and tangents should consist of seven �gures after the decimal point: in fact only six were printed. Because of this error the rules given in the appendix for using the tables would not work." (Jagger 71)