Oughtred.eciv.cwru.edu
Intel 486/66 running Linux redhat 5.2
This computer is a file server for Unix computers with NFS access to
the Computational Mechanics Lab and Samba access as part of the ECIV NT
Domain. It has 18 Gbytes of disk space. The disks are mounted
as /arch1 to /arch4 on the workstation computers. It is named after William
Oughtred (March 5, 1574- June 30, 1660).
William Oughtred was born in Eton; Buckinghamshire, England attended
Eton School, and King's College Cambridge. He received his B.A. in
1596 and his M.A. in 1600. Oughtred's wrote Clavis Mathematicae that
included a description of Hindu-Arabic notation and decimal fractions.
The text was written for instruction of his pupil, the son of the Earl
of Arundel and published in 1631. This text was read by a young Isaac Newton
and was Newton’s introduction to mathematics. Oughtred is best known
for his invention of the slide rule. He was an ordained minister.
He may also have been a surveyor and an alchemist.
Web Pages about Oughtred:
http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Oughtred.htm
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