Logarithm
In the 1500s and early 1600s, although science, engineering, and medicine were flourishing, many people did not understand multiplication tables. Mathematicians, astronomers, navigators, and scientists were forced to spend a lot of time performing calculations, so that little time was left to work on experiments and new discoveries. Finally, around 1594 Scottish mathematician John Napier (1550–1617) produced a table of logarithmic, or proportionate, numbers.
How logarithms work
In the commonly known base 10 system, computations that involve very large numbers can become difficult, if not incomprehensible. Napier realized numbers could be more easily expressed in terms of powers. Thus 100 is equal to 10 multiplied by 10, written as 102. This is read as "10 squared" and means "10 to the power two."
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