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Napier’s bonesFiled in Maths on May 10th 05 . Napier’s bones were a calculating device much used in the 16th century, just after place notation with arabic numerals had replaced Roman numerals. You could replace a long multiplication problem with a series of additions and multiplications by 10, 100 and so on. The Wikipedia article for Napier’s Bones has details, references and diagrams.
The implication is that 16th century businessmen found remembering their tables hard work and welcomed a short cut. Food for thought for those devising the “functional core” of Maths that will soon form part of the newly rewritten GCSE? This is filed under Maths. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are closed for this post. |
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