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Lot 27

NAPIER, JOHN. 1550-1617.
Logarithmorum canonis descriptio. Lyon: Barthalemy Vincent, 1620.

5 November 2020, 10:00 PST
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NAPIER, JOHN. 1550-1617.

Logarithmorum canonis descriptio. Lyon: Barthalemy Vincent, 1620. 3 parts in one volume. 4to (190 x 126 mm). 3 titles, first printed in red and black, woodcut diagrams. Contemporary vellum, some pages browned, small worm whole trace in the upper right corner (not effecting text), one page in second title with repaired tear.
Provenance: The Computer History Collection of Serge Roubé.

This edition (the second of the Constructio and first Continental edition of the Descriptio) was published together with a small appendix containing annotations by Henry Briggs on base-ten logarithms. Napier, the 8th Laird of Merchiston, entered St. Andrews University at the age of 13, although he did not earn a degree. By occupation he was a landowner, and seems to have spent more of his energy on his devout and nearly militant dedication to Protestantism, treating mathematics as a leisure time activity. Nonetheless, his work led him to the discovery of logarithms, as explained in these two publications, as well as seminal work on spherical trigonometry and the invention of a machine that calculates the products and quotients of numbers using numbered rods known as "Napier's bones." Brunet IV:39; See PMM 116 (1614 edition).

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