Person: Vernier, Pierre
Pierre Vernier was a French engineer best known for inventing the Vernier measuring scale.
Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):
- Franche-Comté was a Habsburg possession controlled by the Spanish Habsburgs throughout Vernier's life.
- Vernier became a government official holding various positions such as military engineer for the Hapsburgs and director general of the treasury in Dole and Besançon, the capital of Franche- Comté.
- Vernier also held various government posts with the government of Spain and became a Conseiller du Roi.
- The threat of war was never far away and during the last two years of Vernier's life Franche-Comté was frequently invaded by France.
- Like many other mathematicians and scientists of this period, Vernier worked on cartography and on surveying.
- In this book Vernier gives a table of sines and a method for deriving the angles of a triangle if its sides are known.
- He also describes his most famous invention, that of the vernier caliper, an instrument for accurately measuring length.
- It has two graduated scales, a main scale like a ruler and a second scale, the vernier, that slides parallel to the main scale and enables readings to be made to a fraction of a division on the main scale.
Born 19 August 1584, Ornans, Franche-Comté, Spanish Habsburgs (now France). Died 14 September 1638, Ornans, Franche-Comté, Spanish Habsburgs (now France).
View full biography at MacTutor
Thank you to the contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0! 
- Github:
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- non-Github:
- @J-J-O'Connor
- @E-F-Robertson
References
Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:
- O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive
