Tables of Multiplication to a still greater extent have been published
in France. In 1785, was published an octavo volume of tables of the
squares, cubes, square roots, and cube roots of all numbers from 1 to
10,000; and similar tables were again published in 1801. In 1817,
multiplication tables were published in Paris by Voisin; and similar
tables, in two quarto volumes, in 1824, by the French Board of
Longitude, extending as far as a thousand times a thousand. A table of
squares was published in 1810, in Hanover; in 1812, at Leipzig; in 1825,
at Berlin; and in 1827, at Ghent. A table of cubes was published in
1827, at Eisenach; in the same year a similar table at Ghent; and one of
the squares of all numbers as far as 10,000, was published in that year,
in quarto, at Bonn. The Prussian Government has caused a multiplication
table to be calculated and printed, extending as far as 1000 times 1000.
Such are a few of the tables of this class which have been published in
different countries.
This class of tables may be considered as purely arithmetical, since the
results which they express involve no other relations than the
arithmetical dependence of abstract numbers upon each other. When
numbers, however, are taken in a concrete sense, and are applied to
express peculiar modes of quantity,--such as angular, linear,
superficial, and solid magnitudes,--a new set of numerical relations
arise, and a large number of computations are required.
To express angular magnitude, and the various relations of linear
magnitude with which it is connected, involves the consideration of a
vast variety of Geometrical and Trigonometrical tables; such as tables
of the natural sines, co-sines, tangents, secants, co-tangents, &c. &c.;
tables of arcs and angles in terms of the radius; tables for the
immediate solution of various cases of triangles, &c. Volumes without
number of such tables have been from time to time computed and
published. It is not sufficient, however, for the purposes of
computation to tabulate these immediate trigonometrical functions. Their
squares[4] and higher powers, their square roots, and other roots, occur
so frequently, that it has been found expedient to compute tables for
them, as well as for the same functions of abstract numbers.
[Footnote 4: The squares of the sines of angles are extensively used in
the calculations connected with the theory of the tides. Not aware that
tables of these squares existed, Bouvard, who calculated the tides for
Laplace, underwent the labour of calculating the square of each
individual sine in every case in which it occurred.]
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