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Development of Trigonometry

1) Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian astronomers used early forms of trigonometry, such as the ratio of half the base to the height of a pyramid, to solve problems, though they lacked a concept of angle measure. 2) Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians developed trigonometry using chords of circles, with Hipparchus creating the first trigonometric table in the 2nd century BC. 3) Ptolemy expanded on Hipparchus' work in his influential Almagest, deriving equivalent trigonometric identities and creating trigonometric tables using chords instead of sine and cosine as is used today.

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405 views3 pages

Development of Trigonometry

1) Ancient Egyptian and Babylonian astronomers used early forms of trigonometry, such as the ratio of half the base to the height of a pyramid, to solve problems, though they lacked a concept of angle measure. 2) Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians developed trigonometry using chords of circles, with Hipparchus creating the first trigonometric table in the 2nd century BC. 3) Ptolemy expanded on Hipparchus' work in his influential Almagest, deriving equivalent trigonometric identities and creating trigonometric tables using chords instead of sine and cosine as is used today.

Uploaded by

Ronald
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Development[edit]

Ancient Near East[edit]


The ancient Egyptians and Babylonians had known of theorems on the ratios of the sides of similar
triangles for many centuries. However, as pre-Hellenic societies lacked the concept of an angle
measure, they were limited to studying the sides of triangles instead. [9]
The Babylonian astronomers kept detailed records on the rising and setting of stars, the motion of
the planets, and the solar and lunar eclipses, all of which required familiarity with angular distances
measured on the celestial sphere.[6] Based on one interpretation of the Plimpton 322 cuneiform tablet
(c. 1900 BC), some have even asserted that the ancient Babylonians had a table of secants. [10] There
is, however, much debate as to whether it is a table of Pythagorean triples, a solution of quadratic
equations, or a trigonometric table.
The Egyptians, on the other hand, used a primitive form of trigonometry for building pyramids in the
2nd millennium BC.[6] The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, written by the Egyptian scribe Ahmes (c.
1680–1620 BC), contains the following problem related to trigonometry: [6]
"If a pyramid is 250 cubits high and the side of its base 360 cubits long, what is its seked?"

Ahmes' solution to the problem is the ratio of half the side of the base of the pyramid to its height, or
the run-to-rise ratio of its face. In other words, the quantity he found for the seked is the cotangent of
the angle to the base of the pyramid and its face.[6]

Classical antiquity[edit]

The chord of an angle subtends the arc of the angle.

Ancient Greek and Hellenistic mathematicians made use of the chord. Given a circle and an arc on
the circle, the chord is the line that subtends the arc. A chord's perpendicular bisector passes
through the center of the circle and bisects the angle. One half of the bisected chord is the sine of
one half the bisected angle, that is,
and consequently the sine function is also known as the half-chord. Due to this relationship, a
number of trigonometric identities and theorems that are known today were also known
to Hellenistic mathematicians, but in their equivalent chord form.[11]
Although there is no trigonometry in the works of Euclid and Archimedes, in the strict sense of
the word, there are theorems presented in a geometric way (rather than a trigonometric way)
that are equivalent to specific trigonometric laws or formulas. [9] For instance, propositions twelve
and thirteen of book two of the Elements are the laws of cosines for obtuse and acute angles,
respectively. Theorems on the lengths of chords are applications of the law of sines. And
Archimedes' theorem on broken chords is equivalent to formulas for sines of sums and
differences of angles.[9] To compensate for the lack of a table of chords, mathematicians
of Aristarchus' time would sometimes use the statement that, in modern notation,
sin α/sin β < α/β < tan α/tan β whenever 0° < β < α < 90°, now known as Aristarchus's inequality.
[12]

The first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180 – 125 BCE),
who is now consequently known as "the father of trigonometry." [13] Hipparchus was the first to
tabulate the corresponding values of arc and chord for a series of angles. [7][13]
Although it is not known when the systematic use of the 360° circle came into mathematics, it is
known that the systematic introduction of the 360° circle came a little after Aristarchus of
Samos composed On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon (ca. 260 BC), since he
measured an angle in terms of a fraction of a quadrant. [12] It seems that the systematic use of the
360° circle is largely due to Hipparchus and his table of chords. Hipparchus may have taken the
idea of this division from Hypsicles who had earlier divided the day into 360 parts, a division of
the day that may have been suggested by Babylonian astronomy. [14] In ancient astronomy, the
zodiac had been divided into twelve "signs" or thirty-six "decans". A seasonal cycle of roughly
360 days could have corresponded to the signs and decans of the zodiac by dividing each sign
into thirty parts and each decan into ten parts.[8] It is due to the Babylonian sexagesimal numeral
system that each degree is divided into sixty minutes and each minute is divided into sixty
seconds.[8]

Menelaus' theorem

Menelaus of Alexandria (ca. 100 AD) wrote in three books his Sphaerica. In Book I, he


established a basis for spherical triangles analogous to the Euclidean basis for plane triangles.
[11]
 He establishes a theorem that is without Euclidean analogue, that two spherical triangles are
congruent if corresponding angles are equal, but he did not distinguish between congruent and
symmetric spherical triangles.[11] Another theorem that he establishes is that the sum of the
angles of a spherical triangle is greater than 180°. [11] Book II of Sphaerica applies spherical
geometry to astronomy. And Book III contains the "theorem of Menelaus". [11] He further gave his
famous "rule of six quantities". [15]
Later, Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 90 – ca. 168 AD) expanded upon Hipparchus' Chords in a Circle in
his Almagest, or the Mathematical Syntaxis. The Almagest is primarily a work on astronomy, and
astronomy relies on trigonometry. Ptolemy's table of chords gives the lengths of chords of a
circle of diameter 120 as a function of the number of degrees n in the corresponding arc of the
circle, for n ranging from 1/2 to 180 by increments of 1/2.[16] The thirteen books of
the Almagest are the most influential and significant trigonometric work of all antiquity. [17] A
theorem that was central to Ptolemy's calculation of chords was what is still known today
as Ptolemy's theorem, that the sum of the products of the opposite sides of a cyclic
quadrilateral is equal to the product of the diagonals. A special case of Ptolemy's theorem
appeared as proposition 93 in Euclid's Data. Ptolemy's theorem leads to the equivalent of the
four sum-and-difference formulas for sine and cosine that are today known as Ptolemy's
formulas, although Ptolemy himself used chords instead of sine and cosine. [17] Ptolemy further
derived the equivalent of the half-angle formula
[17]

Ptolemy used these results to create his trigonometric tables, but whether these tables were
derived from Hipparchus' work cannot be determined. [17]
Neither the tables of Hipparchus nor those of Ptolemy have survived to the present day,
although descriptions by other ancient authors leave little doubt that they once existed. [18]
Pythagoras discovered many of the properties of what would become trigonometric
functions. The Pythagorean Theorem, p2 + b2 = h2 is a representation of the fundamental
trigonometric identity sin2(x) + cos2(x) = 1. The length 1 is the hypotenuse of any right
triangle, and has legs length sin(x) and cos(x) with x being one of the two non-right angles.
With this in mind, the identity upon which trigonometry is based turns out to be the
Pythagorean Theorem.

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