Jost Bürgi and the discovery of the logarithms (Q2515075)

The Swiss-born watchmaker and astronomer Jost Bürgi (1552--1632) conceived (and did calculations in respect to) a logarithm table. He did so by means of linear interpolation. On behalf of the so-called 30-year war the publication of the table took another thirty years. Nowadays, (copies of) the known two originals are in existance, but one probably transcripted (Prag, 1620). In this paper, round-off errors are studied as well rewriting mistakes by printers in later time. As such, the author of the paper under review, maintains that 91.5\% round-off decimals in the table are correct, 7.3\% are not, the remaining errors in ciphers happened to be wrong or otherwise impossible to decipher. The paper provides also history of the time, a history of the development of the notion of logarithm, mathematical aspects of Bürgi's tables, guard digits, color Gauß diagrams, a portrait of Bürgi. The paper yields a lot of information.