Mathematical Tables Project

The Mathematical Tables Project[1][2] was one of the largest and most sophisticated computing organizations that operated prior to the invention of the digital electronic computer. Begun in the United States in 1938 as a project of the Works Progress Administration (WPA), it employed 450 unemployed clerks to tabulate higher mathematical functions, such as exponential functions, logarithms, and trigonometric functions. These tables were eventually published in a 28-volume set by Columbia University Press.

  1. ^ Grier, David Alan (1998). "The Math Tables Project of the Work Projects Administration: The Reluctant Start of the Computing Era". IEEE Ann. Hist. Comput. 20 (3): 33–50. doi:10.1109/85.707573. ISSN 1058-6180.
  2. ^ Grier, David Alan (2005). When Computers Were Human. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-09157-0.