Thursday, April 26, 2007

So Now You Know

The slide rule was invented around 1620–1630, shortly after John Napier's publication of the concept of the logarithm. Edmund Gunter of Oxford developed a calculating device with a single logarithmic scale, which, with additional measuring tools, could be used to multiply and divide. The first description of this scale was published in Paris in 1624 by Edmund Wingate (c.1593 - 1656), an English Mathematician, in a book entitled “L'usage de la reigle de proportion en l'arithmetique & geometrie”. The book contains a double scale on one side of which is a logarithmic scale and on the other a tabular scale.
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