Musical logarithms in the seventeenth century: Descartes, Mercator, Newton (Q2474816)

The ancient Greeks established a connection between musical intervals, such as the octave, and ratios of lengths of vibrating strings. Shortly after the development of logarithms, mathematicians realized the usefulness of logs in comparing such intervals. This interesting paper brings to light mid-17th-century applications of logs to musical matters. Logarithms appeared sometimes implicitly (Descartes), sometimes explicitly (Nicolaus Mercator and Newton, both in unpublished manuscripts). The article also describes the influence of Descartes' musical results on the other two mathematicians and proposes a chronology to sort out the relationships among the Mercator manuscripts.