'In the list of ERRATA detected in Taylor's Logarithms, for _cos_. 4°
18' 3", read cos. 14° 18' 2".'
Here, however, confusion is worse confounded; for a new error, not
before existing, and of much greater magnitude, is introduced! It will
be necessary, in the Nautical Almanac for 1836, (that for 1835 is
already published,) to introduce the following:
ERRATUM of the ERRATUM of the ERRATA of TAYLOR's _Logarithms_. For cos. 4°
18' 3", _read_ cos. 14° 18' 3".
If proof were wanted to establish incontrovertibly the utter
impracticability of precluding numerical errors in works of this nature,
we should find it in this succession of error upon error, produced, in
spite of the universally acknowledged accuracy and assiduity of the
persons at present employed in the construction and management of the
Nautical Almanac. It is only by the _mechanical fabrication of tables_
that such errors can be rendered impossible.
On examining this list with attention, we have been particularly struck
with the circumstances in which these errors appear to have originated.
It is a remarkable fact, that of the above nineteen errors, eighteen
have arisen from mistakes in _carrying_. Errors 5, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14,
15, 16, 17, 19, have arisen from a carriage being neglected; and errors
1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, and 18, from a carriage being made where none should
take place. In four cases, namely, errors 8, 9, 10, and 16, this has
caused _two_ figures to be wrong. The only error of the nineteen which
appears to have been a press error is the second; which has evidently
arisen from the type 9 being accidentally inverted, and thus becoming a
6. This may have originated with the compositor, but more probably it
took place in the press-work; the type 9 being accidentally drawn out of
the form by the inking-ball, as mentioned in a former case, and on being
restored to its place, inverted by the pressman.
There are two cases among the above errata, in which an error, committed
in the calculation of one number, has evidently been the cause of other
errors. In the third erratum, a wrong carriage was made, in computing
the sine of 4° 23' 38". The next number of the table was vitiated
by this error; for we find the next erratum to be in the sine of 4°
23' 39", in which the figure similarly placed is 1 in excess. A
still more extensive effect of this kind appears in errata 11, 12, 13,
14, 15, 16. A carriage was neglected in computing the sine of 25° 5'
4", and this produced a corresponding error in the five following
numbers of the table, which are those corrected in the five following
errata.
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