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Ten-based Logarithms

NAME: Ten-based Logarithms

ALTERNATIVE NAME/S:

DETAILS/DESCRIPTION:  In the seventeenth century Age of Exploration navigation was important.  Sailors needed:-  tools to take readings of the positions of the stars; an accurate timepiece; and the ability to make arithmetic calculations quickly and accurately.  Before cheap computers, this last requirement was beyond the ability of the large majority of  people.

So the invention of logarithms was important because it reduced many computations to simple addition or subtraction, and then cross-referencing the result in a book.

John Napier*, son of a wealthy Scottish landowner, coined the term ‘logarithm’ and outlined its use in 1614.   But his system was cumbersome, and was Briggs* who made logarithms a successful computational tool with his book Arithmetica Logarithmica in 1624.

Not only did Briggs publish logarithmic tables from calculations involving numbers from 1 to 20,000 and 90,000 to 100,000 and going to 14 decimal places, but his logarithms were much easier to use because (a) they were computed in base 10, and (b) the logarithm of 1 was set to equal 0.

ONELINER: Ten-base logarithms

OTHER CONNECTIONS: None

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