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 homage to the Scottish philosopher. Briggs was delayed in his journey, and Napier complained to a common friend, "Ah, John, Mr. Briggs will not come." At that very moment knocks were heard at the gate, and Briggs was brought into the lord's chamber. Almost one-quarter of an hour was spent, each beholding the other without speaking a word. At last Briggs began: "My lord, I have undertaken this long journey purposely to see your person, and to know by what engine of wit or ingenuity you came first to think of this most excellent help in astronomy, viz. the logarithms; but, my lord, being by you found out, I wonder nobody found it out before, when now known it is so easy."[28] Briggs suggested to Napier the advantage that would result from retaining zero for the logarithm of the whole sine, but choosing 10,000,000,000 for the logarithm of the 10th part of that same sine, i.e. of 5&deg; 44&prime; 22&Prime;. Napier said that he had already thought of the change, and he pointed out a slight improvement on Briggs' idea; viz. that zero should be the logarithm of 1, and 10,000,000,000 that of the whole sine, thereby making the characteristic of numbers greater than unity positive and not negative, as suggested by Briggs. Briggs admitted this to be more convenient. The invention of "Briggian logarithms" occurred, therefore, to Briggs and Napier independently. The great practical advantage of the new system was that its fundamental progression was accommodated to the base, 10, of our numerical scale. Briggs devoted all his energies to the construction of tables upon the new plan. Napier died in 1617, with the satisfaction of having found in Briggs an able friend to bring to completion his unfinished plans. In 1624 Briggs published his Arithmetica logarithmica, containing the logarithms to 14 places of numbers, from 1 to 20,000 and from 90,000 to 100,000. The gap from 20,000 to 90,000 was filled up by that illustrious successor of