Book, Tafel der Viertel-Quadrate
date: label: date made
content: 1887
name: label: maker
content: Blater, Joseph
notes: label: Description
content: Before the widespread availability of electronic calculators, scientists, engineers, and businessmen relied on a variety of printed mathematical tables. For multiplication, some used books like this one, which lists the quarter squares of all whole numbers from 1 to 200000 (perhaps 1 to 199,000). The product of two numbers a and b can be written:
label: Description
content: ab = ¼ ( (a+b)^2 – (a-b)^2) = ¼ (a+b)^2 – ¼ (a-b)^2.
label: Description
content: The two quantities in the last equation are what one would look up in the table.
label: Description
content: Published tables of quarter squares date at least to 1817, when Antoine Voisin in Paris and J.A.P. Bűrger in Zurich presented works on the subjects. They were soon followed by John Leslie in Edinburgh.
label: Description
content: Joseph Blater’s first published tables of this sort are represented by this volume from 1887. The book was translated into French and into English the following year.
label: Description
content: This example of Blater’s tables was owned by the German- American statistician, mathematician and computer pioneer Carl Hammer (1914-2004).
label: Description
content: References:
label: Description
content: Denis Roegel. A Reconstruction of Blater’s Table of Quarter-squares (1887). [Research Report] 2013. <hal-00880836>
label: Description
content: <I>Trűbner & Company Monthly List</I>, vol. 13, #12, December, 1889, p. 163. This, and several earlier issues of the listing, announces the English edition. This page also has an extract from a review of the book by J.W. L. Glaisher.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: Austria: Vienna state
topic: label: Subject
content: Mathematics
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Mathematics
label: See more items in
content: Mathematical Charts and Tables
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Carl Hammer
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: 1988.3105.01
label: nonaccession number
content: 1988.3105
label: catalog number
content: 1988.3105.01
objectType: label: Object Name
content: Book
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: paper (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 2 cm x 26 cm x 31.7 cm; 25/32 in x 10 1/4 in x 12 15/32 in