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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Logarithms by Hand
From: Peter Monta
Date: 2014 Jun 3, 16:50 -0700
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Miscellaneous/Briggs/index.html
Check out chapter 6---Briggs makes an error in the 19th decimal place (!) midway through his table of square roots, but he lucks out and the error gradually erases itself.
Question: suppose you want to solve the spherical triangle to arcminute accuracy but have no tables of any sort, just paper and pencil. What is the quickest technique? Sines and cosines (and inverses) using Taylor series, or perhaps some CORDIC-like scheme? Let's suppose the whole method must be derived by the user from memory (including a minimal solar ephemeris).
Cheers,
Peter
From: Peter Monta
Date: 2014 Jun 3, 16:50 -0700
Hi Noell,
There's a charming annotated translation of Briggs's _Arithmetica Logarithmica_ here:http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/~history/Miscellaneous/Briggs/index.html
Cheers,
Peter
