Napier's Bones: How They Work

For Instructables.com.

http://www.instructables.com/id/Napiers_Bones_Quickly_Multiply_Wooden_Style/

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• napier's
• bones
• math

[ghostofjamie]

@AdlerMow Im not quite sure of my relation to him, all I know is that his grandson patrick the second moved from England to Virginia, And i am related thorugh that, I am pretty sure he was one of my Great+ Uncles.

Now my Napier family lives in West Virginia/ Virginia, Ohio, and Florida.

[AdlerMow]

@ghostofjamie Seriously? What's your relation to him? (Nevermind your real name!)

[gmayer66]

The advantage of Napier bones is that you can do larger multiplications: 345 * 658. Just arrange the rods for 3, 4, 5 in order, and read the columns for 8, 5, 6 -- you can then write them down in a parallelogram, shifting one digit to the left each time, and sum, to get the product. There was no need to restrict them to 4 columns. I created one with 24 columns for my kid, and he's multiplying very large numbers -- that most calculators could not represent precisely.

[ChadElder1982]

yeah....much less confusing than a calculator

[RetroCalculators]

Very nicely done - thanks so much - 5 stars (and nice music choice!)

[ghostofjamie]

i am related to john napier the inventor of logarythms or known as "napiers bones"

[sincitybrant]

Thanks@! Going to use this in a Computer class.

[dragonxxjef]

uh...what...?