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The Napierian logarithms were published first in 1614. E. W. Hobson called it "one of the very greatest scientific discoveries that the world has seen." [1]: p.5 Henry Briggs introduced common (base 10) logarithms, which were easier to use. Tables of logarithms were published in many forms
For example, one can multiply a sine that is less than 0.5 by some power of two or ten to bring it into the range [0.5,1]. After finding that logarithm in the radical table, one adds the logarithm of the power of two or ten that was used (he gives a short table), to get the required logarithm. [1]: p. 36
Subsequently, tables with increasing scope were written. These tables listed the values of log 10 x for any number x in a certain range, at a certain precision. Base-10 logarithms were universally used for computation, hence the name common logarithm, since numbers that differ by factors of 10 have logarithms that differ by integers.
These mathematical tables from 1925 were distributed by the College Entrance Examination Board to students taking the mathematics portions of the tests. Tables of common logarithms were used until the invention of computers and electronic calculators to do rapid multiplications, divisions, and exponentiations, including the extraction of nth roots.
The logarithm is denoted "log b x" (pronounced as "the logarithm of x to base b", "the base-b logarithm of x", or most commonly "the log, base b, of x"). An equivalent and more succinct definition is that the function f : x → l o g b x {\displaystyle f\colon x\to log_{b}x} is the inverse function to the function f : x → b x . {\displaystyle ...
The 19 degree pages from Napier's 1614 table of logarithms of trigonometric functions Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio. The term Napierian logarithm or Naperian logarithm, named after John Napier, is often used to mean the natural logarithm. Napier did not introduce this natural logarithmic function, although it is named after him.
The remaining logarithms of the numbers 20,001 to 90,000 were later calculated by Adriaan Vlacq in his table of logarithms of the numbers 1 to 100,000 being accurate to 10 places. Alexander John Thompson published a table of logarithms of the numbers 1 to 100,000 accurate to 20 places in 1952.
An important property of base-10 logarithms, which makes them so useful in calculations, is that the logarithm of numbers greater than 1 that differ by a factor of a power of 10 all have the same fractional part. The fractional part is known as the mantissa. [b] Thus, log tables need only show the fractional part. Tables of common logarithms ...