Jost Bürgi
Jost Bürgi (° on February 28th, 1552 with Lichtensteig in the District of Toggenburg, † on January 31st, 1632 with Cassel) was a clock and watch maker, and manufacturer of instruments Suisse. From 1579 to 1604, he was the astrologer of the Landgrave Guillaume IV of Hesse - Cassel, then until 1630 he worked with Kepler with the service of the emperor Rodolphe II in Prague. He turned over to Cassel the year preceding his death.
With the service of the landgrave Guillaume IV of Hesse-Cassel, it observed the sky with the mathematician Christoph Rothmann, from the observatory of Cassel, one of the first buildings of Europe built specifically for this work. The landgrave had made Bürgi with the conservation of her scientific instruments (astrolabes, spheres, etc), and it is by repairing them that Bürgi discovered the means of improving them. In addition to clocks, it manufactured proportionnal dividers, spheres armillaires, some spheres, a Goniomètre and a pantograph.
The principal achievements of Bürgi were the construction of 2 seconds trigonometrical tables of arc in 2 seconds of arc ( Canon Sinuum , lost since 1592), and the calculation of a table of logarithms, Arithmetische und geometrische Progress-tabulen, sambt gründlichem unterricht, wie solche nützlich in allerley Rechnungen zugebrauchen und verstanden werden ground, (Prague, 1620).
Biography
- 1579 - 1604, astronomer of the court of Landgrafen von Hessen with Kassel, where it improved the instruments and in built the new ones.
- 1588, to facilitate its calculations, it developed the first known system logarithmic curve.
- 1604 - 1630, it is with the service of the emperor Rudolf II with Prague, where Johannes Kepler was astronomer of the court.