Another precursor to logarithms was prosthaphaeresis[1], based on trigonometric functions. Of course, like the quarter-square method, this required lookup tabl

Another precursor to logarithms was prosthaphaeresis[1], based on trigonometric functions. Of course, like the quarter-square method, this required lookup tables, not a nifty device. But even with logarithms, log tables were pretty commonly used as well. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthaphaeresis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosthaphaeresis