Gaspard de Prony

Gaspard Clair François Marie Riche de Prony (22 July 1755 – 29 July 1839) was a French mathematician and engineer, who worked on hydraulics. He was born at Chamelet, Beaujolais, France and died in Asnières-sur-Seine, France.

He was Engineer-in-Chief of the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées.

In 1791, de Prony embarked on the task of producing logarithmic and trigonometric tables for the French Cadastre. The effort was sanctioned by the French National Assembly, which, after the French Revolution wanted to bring uniformity to the multiple measurements and standards used throughout the nation. In particular, his tables were intended for precise land surveys, as part of a greater cadastre effort. The tables were vast, with values calculated to between fourteen and twenty-nine decimal places.

Inspired by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, de Prony divided up the labor into three levels, bragging that he "could manufacture logarithms as easily as one manufactures pins."

The first level consisted of five or six high-ranking mathematicians with sophisticated analytical skills, including Adrien-Marie Legendre and Lazare Carnot. This group chose the analytical formulas most suited to evaluation by numerical methods, and specified the number of decimals and the numerical range the tables were to cover.

The second group of lesser mathematicians, seven or eight in number, combined analytical and computational skills, and this group calculated the pivotal values using the formulas provided and the sets of starting differences. They also prepared templates for the human computers, and the first worked row of calculations, as well as the instructions for the computers to carry the sequence to completion.

...
Wikipedia