John Napier
1550 – 1617
Invented logarithms — the machinery under every decibel.
A Scottish laird and mathematician, Napier spent twenty years building the first tables of logarithms, published in 1614 — a tool that turned multiplication into addition and collapsed the labor of astronomy and navigation. Kepler called it a gift of years added to his life.
Every decibel, every log scale, and every slide rule that followed descends from Napier's insight. He also popularized the decimal point. The dB tools here are, at bottom, Napier arithmetic.
Portrait: a stylized blueprint-line rendering, not a photograph.
Contributions in the toolbox
- 1614
Publishes the first logarithm tables — the mathematical machinery under every dB.
→ dB Converter - 1614
Logarithms — the machinery.
→ dB Voltage Ratio - 1614
Logarithms — arithmetic for multiplicative quantities.
→ Power Sum in dBm