While Martha was as upset as Betsy and I, she wanted no part in resolving the matter.
The best general method of calculating logarithms consists, in its simplest form, in resolving the number whose logarithm is required into factors of the form I - i r n, where n is one of the nine digits, and making use of subsidiary tables of logarithms of factors of this form.
Soon after the introduction of the literary journal in England, one of a more familiar tone was started by the eccentric John Dunton in the Athenian Gazette, or Casuistical Mercury, resolving all the most Nice and Curious Questions (1689-1690 to 1695-1696), afterwards called The Athenian Mercury, a kind of forerunner of Notes and Queries, being a penny weekly sheet, with a quarterly critical supplement.
A prism or a train of prisms. These are employed in instruments of small power, especially when luminosity is a consideration; but their advantage in this respect is to a great extent lost, when, in order to secure increased resolving power, the size of the prisms, or their number, is unduly increased.
The optical effect as regards resolving power is the same as with a grating of N lines in the nth order, but, nearly all the light not absorbed by the glass may be concentrated in one or two orders.'
