Trigonometria Britannica: sive de doctrina triangulorum libri duo

FIRST EDITION, (edited by Henry Gellibrand). Gouda: Pieter Rammazeyn, 1633

folio (350 x 212mm.), half-title, complete with 272 pp. of tables, contemporary tree calf gilt, rebacked, half-title restored at edge.

This important work has the first complete set of Trigonometrical Tables

In circa 1577 Briggs entered St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1581 and a master’s degree in 1585. He was elected a fellow of St. John’s in 1589 and a lecturer in mathematics and medicine there in 1592. While at St. John’s, Briggs began research in astronomy and navigation with the mathematician Edward Wright.

In 1596 Briggs was appointed the first professor of Geometry at the newly opened Gresham College in London, and for more than two decades he was instrumental in establishing it as a major centre for scientific research and advanced mathematical instruction. Briggs also took an active part in bridging the gap between mathematical theory and practice. He instructed mariners in navigation, advised explorers on various proposed expeditions, and invested in the London Company (responsible for founding Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607). His publications from this period include A Table to find the Height of the Pole, the Magnetic Declination being given (1602) and Tables for the Improvement of Navigation (1610); he returned to the subject of exploration later with A Treatise of the Northwest Passage to the South Sea, Through the Continent of Virginia and by Fretum Hudson (1622). 

In 1632, Henry Gellibrand, then the Professor of Astronomy at Gresham College, London, arranged for the publishing of the Trigonometria Britannica (T. B.) by Adrian Vlacq in Gouda the following year: the work consisted of two Books, and sets of tables of natural sines in steps of one hundredth of a degree to 15 places, as well as tables of tangents & secants to 10 places, together with their logarithms. The explanatory Book I was the last work of Henry Briggs (1559-1631), Savilian Professor of Geometry at Oxford, and was devoted mainly to the construction of his table of sines; while Book II, written by the youthful Gellibrand on the instigation of the dying Briggs, his mentor, contained instructions and examples on the use of logarithms in solving trigonometrical problems.

Henry Briggs should be remembered in the first place for his ground-breaking work in navigational tables. In fact, he contributed more tables to Wright’s ‘On Certain Errors in Navigation’, which were of an astronomical nature, since he was also an able astronomer.