The ''Canon Sinuum'' was a historic table of

sine In mathematics, sine and cosine are trigonometric functions of an angle. The sine and cosine of an acute angle are defined in the context of a right triangle: for the specified angle, its sine is the ratio of the length of the side that is oppo ...

s thought to have given the sines to 8 sexagesimal places between 0 and 90 degrees in steps of 2 arc seconds. Some authors believe that the table was only between 0 and 45 degrees. It was created by

Jost Bürgi Jost Bürgi (also ''Joost, Jobst''; Latinisation of names, Latinized surname ''Burgius'' or ''Byrgius''; 28 February 1552 – 31 January 1632), active primarily at the courts in Kassel and Prague, was a Swiss clockmaker, a maker of astronomica ...

at the end of the

16th century The 16th century begins with the Julian year 1501 ( MDI) and ends with either the Julian or the Gregorian year 1600 ( MDC) (depending on the reckoning used; the Gregorian calendar introduced a lapse of 10 days in October 1582). The 16th cent ...

. Such tables were essential for

navigation Navigation is a field of study that focuses on the process of monitoring and controlling the movement of a craft or vehicle from one place to another.Bowditch, 2003:799. The field of navigation includes four general categories: land navigation, ...

at sea.

Johannes Kepler Johannes Kepler (; ; 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music. He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws ...

called the ''Canon Sinuum'' the most precise known table of sines. This table is thought to be lost. The ''Canon Sinuum'' was computed by Bürgi's

algorithm In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algorithms are used as specificat ...

s explained in his work

Fundamentum Astronomiae ''Fundamentum Astronomiae'' is a historic manuscript presented by Jost Bürgi to Emperor Rudolf II in 1592. It describes Bürgi's trigonometry based algorithms called Kunstweg which can be used to calculate sines at arbitrary precision.Staudacher, ...

presented to Emperor Rudolf II. in 1592.Staudacher, S., 2014. Jost Bürgi, Kepler und der Kaiser. Verlag NZZ, Zürich. These algorithms made use of differences and were one of the early uses of difference calculus. The largest trigonometrical table actually contained in the Fundamentum Astronomiae is a table giving the sines for every minute of the quadrant and to 5 to 7 sexagesimal places. The manuscript of Fundamentum Astronomiae is now in the collection of the Biblioteka Uniwersytecka in

Wrocław Wrocław (; german: Breslau, or . ; Silesian German: ''Brassel'') is a city in southwestern Poland and the largest city in the historical region of Silesia. It lies on the banks of the River Oder in the Silesian Lowlands of Central Europe, rou ...

, Poland.

References

History of mathematics Wrocław {{mathematics-lit-stub

See also

References