William Oughtred

Life & Legacy

William Oughtred ( AWT-urd;5 March 1574 – 30 June 1660), also Owtred or Uhtred, was an English mathematician and Anglican clergyman. After John Napier discovered logarithms and Edmund Gunter created the logarithmic scales (lines, or rules) upon which slide rules are based, Oughtred was the first known to use two such scales in separate rods sliding by one another to perform direct multiplication and division. He is credited with inventing the slide rule in about 1622, a priority disputed with Richard Delamain, by which Oughtred's innovation is brought forward to c 1632. He also introduced the "

×

{\displaystyle \times }

" symbol for multiplication and the abbreviations "

sin

{\displaystyle \sin }

" and "

cos

{\displaystyle \cos }

" for the sine and cosine functions.