Napiers Bones Who invented/ created/ discovered Napiers Bones? Napiers Bones was created by John Napier of Merchistoun (1550-1617).
He was also known as the Marvellous Merchiston. John Napier was a famous Scottish theologian and mathematician. In addition to being an educated man, Napier was also a nobleman, a baron, the 7th Laird of Merchiston, and owner of a consierable estate.He was famous for the invention of logarithms and for popularizing the use of the decimal point. One of Napier’s greatest hits includes such groundbreaking texts as A Description of the Admirable Table of Logarithms, and his invention of divining rods used as multiplication tables. What is Napiers Bones? A set of rods, made of bone or other material, each divided into nine spaces, and containing the numbers of a column of the multiplication table. It facilitates the operations of multiplication and division.
Where was Napiers Bones discovered/ created? The worlds first practical calculator, one that could multiply, divide and find roots was developed in England during the latter part of the 16th century. John Napier’s description of what we usually call Napiers Bones comes to us through the book Rabdology (a term coined by him) or “Calculation with Rods.” When was it discovered/ created? In 1617, John Napier published Rabdologia, a book that contained a description of the rods that he had developed to aid in multiplication, division, and the extraction of square roots. Napier’s bones have since become popular as a way of demonstrating multiplication to school students. How was it used then and now? Napier’s bones, also called Napier’s rods, are numbered rods which can be used to perform multiplication of any number by a number 2-9. By placing “bones” corresponding to the multiplier on the left side and the bones corresponding to the digits of the multiplicand next to it to the right, and product can be read off simply by adding pairs of numbers (with appropriate carries as needed) in the row determined by the multiplier (Weisstein, 2002).
The Essay on John Napier Logarithms Tables Written
John Napier- John Napier was born in Merchiston Tower in Scotland, 1550. He was known as the "Marvelous Merchiston", a title received for his genius and imaginative vision in a number of fields. Napier studied briefly at St. Andrews University beginning at the age of 13. On his marriage in 1572, he was provided with an estate by his father, Sir Archibald Napier of Merchiston. He passed the ...
There are ten bones corresponding to the digits 0-9, and a special eleventh bone that is used the represent the multiplier.
The multiplier bone is simply a list of the digits 1-9 arranged vertically downward. The remainder of the bones each have a digit written in the top square, with the multiplication table for that digits written downward, with the digits split by a diagonal line going from the lower left to the upper right. In practice, multiple sets of bones were needed for multiplication of numbers containing repeated digits (Weisstein, 2002).
Why is it important in the study of math? The rods used in Napiers bones are but a clever use of what we call the multiplication table. Napiers bones helps solve mathematical operations, particularly multiplication. References: Weisstein, Eric W. Napiers Bones. From Math World A Wolfram Web Resource. http://mathworld.wolfram.com/NapiersBones.html. 2002 Hansen, Jim.
John Napiers Bones. http://jimsmathandscience.com/Napiers%20Bones/Napi ersBones.html. 2007.
