B chapter.indd - Charles Babbage Institute - University of Minnesota

208
Erwin Tomash Library
Briggs, Henry British Association
Place: Gouda
Publisher: Peter Rammesein
Edition: 1st
Language: Latin
Binding: modern leather
Pagination: pp. [8], 112, [272]
Collation: π 4 A–O 4 a–y 6 z 4
Size: 350x215 mm
After completing his calculation (see Briggs, 1624) of
logarithms of the natural numbers, Henry Briggs began
the immense task of creating a table of sines, tangents,
secants, logarithms of sines and logarithms of tangents.
He completed the calculations but was not able to finish
an introduction before his death. His friend Henry
Gellibrand, a professor of astronomy at Gresham College
in London, took on the task of finishing the preface
(explaining the tables and their application to plane and
spherical trigonometry) and seeing the work through the
press. Adrian Vlacq arranged for the work to be printed
in Gouda by Peter Rammesein.
Like Briggs’ logarithms of numbers, this table contains
the differences between each entry, allowing the user to
interpolate if necessary. It was seldom necessary because
these tables contained an entry for each one hundredth
of a degree (with the equivalent minutes and seconds
being shown in the rightmost column of each page – see
illustrations). This move to having an entry for every
hundredth of a degree was copied by Nathaniel Roe
(1633), William Oughtred (1657) and John Newton
(1658), but the tables of Vlacq, based on the old
sexagesimal division of a degree, were so popular that
this change was ignored by others.
Illustrations available:
Title page
Page from the tables
Briggs, Henry (1600–1666)
See Vlacq, Adriaan; Arithmetica logarithmica, 1628.
See Faulhaber, Johann; Zehntausent logarithmi,
der absolut oder ledigen zahlen von 1. biss auff
10000,1631
B 257
Brink, Raymond Woodward (1890–)
Logarithmic and trigonometric tables.
Year: 1928
Place: New York
Publisher: D. Appleton-Century Company
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Binding: original cloth boards
Pagination: pp. [6], 110
Size: 197x135 mm
B 256
A small book of logarithms and other useful tables,
suitable for student use.
Illustrations available:
Title page
B 258
British Association for the Advancement of Science
Report of the Fifty-Eighth Meeting of the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. Held at
Bath in September 1888
Year: 1889
Place: London
Publisher: John Murray
Edition: 1st
Language: English
Binding: contemporary buckram
Pagination: pp. xcvi, 988, 116, 32
Collation: A 8 a–e 8 B–3Q 8 3R 4 3S 2 A–G 8 H 2 B–C 8
Size: 215x138 mm
This contains a very short item reporting on a presentation
by Henry Babbage, the son of Charles Babbage, about
his father’s Analytical Engine. It mentions that a section,
working to twenty-nine digits, including the anticipatory
carry device, was shown to those at the meeting.
Illustrations available:
Entire item.