Indian Science and Technology in the Eighteenth Century: Some Contemporary European Accounts c9.79

c9.79

Such calculations could not be made without spherical trigonometry, or some method equivalent to it. If, indeed, we would allow the least skill possible to the authors of these tables, we may suppose, that the arches were measured on the circles of a large globe, or armillary sphere, such as we know to have been one of the first instruments of the Egyptian and Greek astronomers. But there are some of the tables where the arches are put down true to seconds, a degree of accuracy which a mechanical method can scarcely have afforded.