Accession No
5341
Brief Description
Mr Hélies' system of rolling Napier's rods, French, 1830-1845
Origin
France
Maker
Class
calculating; demonstration
Earliest Date
1830
Latest Date
1845
Inscription Date
Material
wood; paper; metal; thread; glass
Dimensions
Width 188mm; depth 29mm; length 113mm
Special Collection
Provenance
Purchased from David Coffeen, Tesseract, Box 151, Hastings-on-Hudson, New York 10706, USA on 14/09/1998. Purchased with 50% grant from the PRISM fund.
Inscription
Description Notes
Mr Hélies' system of rolling Napier's rods. circa 1835-1840. French. The ten Napier’s cylinders are mounted in parallel, with turned wood knobs, in a case bound with decorative paper. Case has glass front to cover cylinders. Metal hoop at top for hanging the object by. Label on the back white paper with blue decorated edge hand written in black ink “Voir.. Un million d* faits.. 812 ”
Condition good, though the decorative paper is damaged at edges
References
Events
Description
Rolling rods are a variation on Napier's bones, they work on exactly the same principle, not loose, and are usually cased.
In 1617 John Napier invented the calculating aid Napier's bones. These were first described in his book Numeration by Little Rods in 1617. Each of the 10 rods or ‘bones’ in a set are engraved with a multiplication table. This simple device made multiplying and dividing large numbers very easy by transforming the calculations into simple addition and subtraction. The rods became extremely popular and spread across Europe lasting well into the 20th century where they were still used in primary schools in the 1960s.
FM:45680
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