Napier's Bones

A day of marking. I briefly escaped to visit the museum. There is a nice bit on early Scottish science. I quite liked the Napier's Bones, the basis for modern computing. I should dig out the various calculating devices I have. Napier came up with logarithms which simplify multiplication to addition. These Napier's Bones from 1650 work like a slide rule. It was nice to visit the museum. The parasite exhibition was packed with kids. I was slightly disappointed but I think it is clearly targeted at kids and hits that mark spot on.

And here are the instructions on how they work translated from the original Latin into German from 1618.