There was thus left a gap between 20,000 and 90,000, which was filled up
by Adrian Vlacq (or Ulaccus), who published at Gouda, in Holland, in
1628, a table containing the logarithms of the numbers from unity to
100,000 to 10 places of decimals. Having calculated 70,000 logarithms
and copied only 30,000, Vlacq would have been quite entitled to have
called his a new work. He designates it, however, only a second edition
of Briggs's _Arithmetica logarithmica_, the title running _Arithmetica
logarithmica sive Logarithmorum Chiliades centum, ... editio secunda
aucta per Adrianum Vlacq, Goudanum_. This table of Vlacq's was
published, with an English explanation prefixed, at London in 1631 under
the title _Logarithmicall Arithmetike ... London, printed by George
Miller_, 1631. There are also copies with the title-page and
introduction in French and in Dutch (Gouda, 1628).
Briggs had himself been engaged in filling up the gap, and in a letter
to John Pell, written after the publication of Vlacq's work, and dated
October 25, 1628, he says:--
"My desire was to have those chiliades that are wantinge betwixt 20
and 90 calculated and printed, and I had done them all almost by my
selfe, and by some frendes whom my rules had sufficiently informed,
and by agreement the busines was conveniently parted amongst us; but I
am eased of that charge and care by one Adrian Vlacque, an Hollander,
who hathe done all the whole hundred chiliades and printed them in
Latin, Dutche and Frenche, 1000 bookes in these 3 languages, and hathe
sould them almost all. But he hathe cutt off 4 of my figures
throughout; and hathe left out my dedication, and to the reader, and
two chapters the 12 and 13, in the rest he hath not varied from me at
all."
The original calculation of the logarithms of numbers from unity to
101,000 was thus performed by Briggs and Vlacq between 1615 and 1628.
Vlacq's table is that from which all the hundreds of tables of
logarithms that have subsequently appeared have been derived. It
contains of course many errors, which were gradually discovered and
corrected in the course of the next two hundred and fifty years.
The first calculation or publication of Briggian or common logarithms of
trigonometrical functions was made in 1620 by Edmund Gunter, who was
Briggs's colleague as professor of astronomy in Gresham College. The
title of Gunter's book, which is very scarce, is _Canon triangulorum_,
and it contains logarithmic sines and tangents for every minute of the
quadrant to 7 places of decimals.
The next publication was due to Vlacq, who appended to his logarithms of
numbers in the _Arithmetica logarithmica_ of 1628 a table giving log
sines, tangents and secants for every minute of the quadrant to 10
places; these were obtained by calculating the logarithms of the natural
sines, &c. given in the _Thesaurus mathematicus_ of Pitiscus (1613).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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