Description
"All computation was greatly simplified early in the seventeenth century by the invention of logarithms." – Eric Temple Bell, "The Development of Mathematics" (1940)
"The learned calculators, about the close of the 16th, and beginning of the 17th century, finding the operations of multiplication and division by very long numbers, of 7 or 8 places of figures, which they had frequently occasion to perform, in resolving problems relating to geography and astronomy, to be exceedingly troublesome, set themselves to consider, whether it was not possible to find some method of lessening this labour, by substituting other easier operations in their stead. In pursuit of this object, they reflected…
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