Before Palm Pilots and iPods, PCs and laptops, the term "computer" referred to the people who did scientific calculations by hand. These workers were neither calculating geniuses nor idiot savants but knowledgeable people who, in other circumstances, might have become scientists in their own right. When Computers Were Human represents the first in-depth account of this little-known, 200-year epoch in the history of science and technology. Beginning with the story of his own grandmother, who was trained as a human computer, David Alan Grier provides a poignant introduction to the wider world of women and men who did the hard computational labor of science. His grandmother's casual remark, "I wish I'd used my calculus," hinted at a career deferred and an education forgotten, a secret life unappreciated; like many highly educated women of her generation, she studied to become a human computer because nothing else would offer her a place in the scientific world. The book begins with the return of Halley's comet in 1758 and the effort of three French astronomers to compute its orbit. It ends four cycles later, with a UNIVAC electronic computer projecting the 1986 orbit. In between, Grier tells us about the surveyors of the French Revolution, describes the calculating machines of Charles Babbage, and guides the reader through the Great Depression to marvel at the giant computing room of the Works Progress Administration. When Computers Were Human is the sad but lyrical story of workers who gladly did the hard labor of research calculation in the hope that they might be part of the scientific community. In the end, they were rewarded by a new electronic machine that took the place and the name of those who were, once, the computers.

When Computers Were Human

But this is understandable; it is from mummified remains that the best preserved evidence has been obtained. Like the written record and the art form (paintings, sculpture and the like), preserved remains are no less difficult to interpret, or are open to misinterpretation. As Wells states, 'It no longer seems extraordinary that palaeopathologists occasionally make a wrong diagnosis. The wonder is we ever make a right one.' In a most useful survey, Wells points out the pitfalls of pseudopathology with the many traps that lie in wait for the unwary. One danger not mentioned is the practice of placing newer mummies in older coffins to enhance their sale value. That this contribution should be the first sets the remainder in perspective and illustrates the careful examination that should be undertaken before any conclusions are drawn. Palaeopathology is a rich and growing field for research, and as new techniques are devised older studies are re-investigated and freshly-discovered material submitted to more sophisticated examination. This places a large burden of responsibility on the archaeologist excavating in the field and the curator preserving the material in the museum. Again and again contributors refer to specimens housed in museums or, more rarely, to specimens which can no longer be traced. A specimen inadequately housed is often lost to science and indirectly this book is a plea that the whereabouts of specimens should be recorded and for the curator to document his specimens as fully as possible, a plea well substantiated by Morse in his study of tuberculosis. It is also a plea for most careful excavation, a plea well illustrated by Brothwell in his description of the finding of calculi in a Somerset Dark Age Cemetery. It is not only human remains that need careful preservation and documentation. The associated remains are often equally important as the only means of dating the site-the problem mentioned by Goff when dealing with the effect of syphilis on bones. Equally the palaeopathologist should be aware of the limitations in dating his material and of the information that museum records ought to reveal. This work can be read with profit by all three. This is a well-produced book and a single reading has revealed less than a dozen typographical errors. The figures, being from many different sources, vary in quality but are generally good. Figure 5a, on page sixty-two, has been reproduced upside down, and some of the …

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The Lives of the Professors of Gresham College

This document is a reconstruction of Gunter's table of logarithms (1620), the first table of decimal logarithms of trigonometric functions.

https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00543938/document

A reconstruction of Gunter's Canon triangulorum (1620)

Joannis Verneri de Triangulis Sphaericis Libri quatuor. By Herausgegeben von Axel Anthon Bjornbo. (Teubner.)

Before slide rules became widely used in the nineteenth century, European military architects, surveyors, navigators, and other mathematical practitioners performed calculations on sectors. These mathematical instruments have two arms that are joined by a hinge and marked with various proportional, numerical, trigonometric, and logarithmic scales. The user employed a pair of dividers to transfer distances between a sector and a drawing and to measure distances on the scales, effectively creating a series of similar triangles or proportional relationships. Sectors were independently invented on the Italian peninsula and in England at the turn of the seventeenth century; a third version emerged in France by late in the seventeenth century. This paper uses 27 sectors in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History mathematics collections to trace the history of the instrument.

Early Modern Computation on Sectors

The sector - also known as the proportional, geometric, or military compass - was an analog calculating instrument used widely from the late 16th century until modern times. The origins and usage of this commonly encountered instrument are not well known. This article provides historical background on the sector's invention and on its precursor instruments, and describes the uses for many of the scales commonly found on these instruments.

M.R. Williams

Papers

The sector: its history, scales, and uses