currently working towards tops-10 assembly and fortran for some of what feynman is discussing towards the end of this chapter. earlier in the chapter, he mentions briggs of halifax, 1620. this conjures a picture of a hermit living in a rock hut on the nova scotia coast. the true history turns out to be surprisingly pleasant.

henry briggs 1561-1630 was a contemporary of shakespeare 1564-1616, cervantes 1547-1616, and robert burton 1577-1640.

briggs was born near halifax yorkshire england and remained in england. one of his two sons did go to the new world. he was associated with cambridge, gresham college london, and oxford, where he surely knew burton. gresham college was effectively the precursor of the royal society, which incorporated in 1660.

he worked on navigation and astronomy, strategic fields for england. two hundred years later, his work was a cornerstone of the reality shaping moderns like naval captain, navigator, and astronomer jack aubrey.

he quickly adopted and then improved the logarithm, invented by his scottish contemporary john napier 1550-1617. he visited napier to coordinate on advancing common base 10 ‘briggsian logarithms’, which are more practical than napier’s originals and became a standard. he invented the long division algorithm taught in elementary schools. and he used his own advances to publish logarithm, sine, tangent, and secant tables.

here’s feynman’s comments.

This is how logarithms were originally computed by Mr. Briggs of Halifax, in 1620. He said, “I computed successively 54 square roots of 10.” … all logarithm tables for three hundred years were borrowed from Mr. Briggs’ tables by reducing the number of decimal places. Only in modern times, with the WPA and computing machines, have new tables been independently computed.

and a comment from a colleague at oxford.

a man of great probity, a condemner of riches, and contented with his own station, preferring a studious retirement to all the splendid circumstances of life