Definition:Trigonometry/Historical Note
Historical Note on trigonometry
The earliest evidence of trigonometry dates from the records of Egypt and Mesopotamia.
There exists a Babylonian stone tablet dating from circa $\text {1900}$$\text { BCE}$ to $\text {1600}$$\text { BCE}$ on which ratios are listed which are equivalent to squares of the secant function.
In the Rhind Papyrus, dating from circa $\text {1650}$$\text { BCE}$, there exist problems where the ratios of the sides of a triangle are applied to pyramids.
However, neither the Egyptians nor the Babylonians had a concept of angular measure, and such ratios were considered as properties of triangles rather than angles.
The field of trigonometry emerged in ancient Greece from applications of geometry to astronomical studies.
The earliest such record comes from the time of Hippocrates of Chios's work Elements of Geometry, dating from circa $430$ BCE.
While the Greeks focused on the calculation of chords, mathematicians in India created the earliest-known tables of values for trigonometric functions such as sine.
An analytic approach to trigonometry was introduced by Leonhard Paul Euler.
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Sources
- 1972: George F. Simmons: Differential Equations ... (previous) ... (next): $\S 3$: Appendix $\text A$: Euler
- 1992: George F. Simmons: Calculus Gems ... (previous) ... (next): Chapter $\text {A}.21$: Euler ($\text {1707}$ – $\text {1783}$)
- 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): trigonometry
- 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): trigonometry