Mirifici Logarithmorum Canonis Descriptio

Napier publishes the first logarithm tables

Fifty-seven pages of explanation, then ninety pages of numbers — enough to turn a long multiplication into a table lookup and an addition.

1614, Edinburgh: the tables go to print

John Napier published Mirifici logarithmorum canonis descriptio at Edinburgh in 1614, printed by Andrew Hart. It was the first publication of a complete logarithm table.

The title page and surviving copies fix the year. The consulted catalogues and scholarship do not establish a particular day or month.

What was actually in the book

The text explained how Napier's new artificial numbers could replace difficult multiplications, divisions and root extractions with simpler operations. Fifty-seven pages of explanation were followed by ninety pages of tables.

Those tables paired trigonometric sines with Napier's logarithms at one-minute angular intervals through a whole quadrant, computed on a whole-sine scale of 10,000,000 units. The Descriptio gave worked examples but withheld the construction method, which appeared posthumously as Constructio in 1619.

Translation, lectures and collaboration

Napier's stated aim was to cut the delay, labour and risk of error in lengthy calculation, especially trigonometric calculation. Astronomers, navigators and anyone working in spherical trigonometry could now consult printed logarithms instead of grinding through the arithmetic.

Edward Wright set about an English translation for practitioners. Henry Briggs was lecturing on the method and travelled to meet Napier in 1615, and the two went on to develop the more convenient common-logarithm system.

Sources

Researched 23 Aug 2026 7 sources 2 audit passes

How this was checked

Researched from the web into a fact sheet, rewritten from that sheet, then audited against it by a different model. How the pipeline works →

What the sources leave uncertain

The title page and surviving copies establish 1614, but the consulted catalogues and scholarship do not establish a particular day or month.
Napier had worked on the idea for many years. The event is the first publication of logarithms, not necessarily the moment of invention.
Joost Bürgi developed a related method independently but published later, so “Napier invented logarithms” requires that independent-development qualification.