4 ms·

That was a fun read

• credit_guy 3y ago
  Happy to hear. Here's another fun one, although much longer. https://www.math.ksu.edu/~cjbalm/570s14/briggs.pdf https://www.math.ksu.edu/~cjbalm/570s14/briggs.pdf It describes how Briggs created his table of logarithms with 14 decimal places, published in 1624, only 10 years after Napier published the first logarithms in 1614. Those times mush have felt like an incredible leap forward, probably similar to LLMs now. Kepler published his 3rd law of planetary motion in 1619. It would not have been possible to get that without logarithms, and it's quite likely that he knew of logarithms independently of Napier (who came up with them after some discussions with Kepler's boss, Tycho Brahe).