- Gaspard de Prony
Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche de Prony (
July 22 ,1755 -July 29 ,1839 ) was a Frenchmathematician andengineer , who worked onhydraulics . He was born atChamelet ,Beaujolais ,France .He was Engineer-in-Chief of the
École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées .In 1792, de Prony began a major task of producing
logarithm ic andtrigonometric tables, the Cadastre. The tables and their production were vast, with values calculated to between fourteen and twenty-nine decimal places.Getting such a massive work published proved to be difficult and in factthe tables were never published in full and it was near the end of the century before even a part appeared.
One of de Prony's important scientific inventions was the '
de Prony brake ' which he invented in 1821 to measure the performance of machines and engines.See also:
Prony equation .External links
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