Review of "Smoley’s Parallel Tables of Logarithms and Squares For Engineers, Architects and Students," by C. K. Smoley

Review of

Smoley’s Parallel Tables of Logarithms and Squares For Engineers, Architects and Students, by C. K. Smoley

Five out of five stars

 While the advance of technology has rendered this book obsolete, not a single entry has been rendered incorrect or invalid. As the title states, most of the content consists of the base ten logarithm and the square of linear measures in the English system. These entries are in feet and whole inches with fractions of an inch added. The entries are to five decimal places and go up to 300 inches. There are similar tables for the trig functions based on 0-12 inches.  Another table has the circumference, area, square, cube, square root, cube root and 1000 times reciprocals for the numbers from 1 to 1000.

 Before the advent of the simple pocket calculator, books like this were necessary for the technical person. When accuracy was needed in a hurry, you reached for “the book,” looked up the value and then moved to the next step in the problem. Even the modern engineer/scientist should bow down in appreciation for the work people did in creating reference works like this one. They were the very definition of “labor saving device,” doing a great deal to advance science and technology.