Only three years previously, in 1614, the Scottish mathematician John Napier had formulated a logarithm very similar to that now known as the 'natural logarithm'. Over the subsequent few years, Briggs and Napier had worked in collaboration to develop this discovery. Briggs's key contibution to the field was the proposal that the logarithms should use base 10, for ease of calculation. Napier died in April 1617, but Briggs pressed ahead with their discoveries, and soon afterwards produced his
Logarithmorum Chilias Prima('Introduction to Logarithms').
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