User:Milton Beychok/Sandbox

The importance of logarithms

The development of electronic calculators and computers in the mid-1900's reduced the importance of logarithms for computations but not the importance of logarithmic functions. Thus, we should discuss the importance of logarithms before and after the advent of electronic calculators and computers.

Before the advent calculators and computers

The operations of addition and subtraction are much easier to perform than are the operations of multiplication and division. Logarithms were characterized by Pierre-Simon Laplace, the French mathematician and astronmer, as "doubling the life of an astronomer". The German mathematician, Karl Friedrich Gauss, who also did work in physics and astronomy, is said to have memorized a table of logarithms to save the time required to look up a logarithm each time he needed one.