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The history of trigonometry and of trigonometric functions may span nearly 4,000

years.

Etymology
The term "trigonometry" derives from the Greek "τριγονομετρία" ("trigonometria"),
meaning "triangle measuring", from "τρίγονο" (triangle) + "μετρειν" (to measure).

Our modern word "sine", is derived from the Latin word sinus, which means "bay" or
"fold", from a mistranslation (via Arabic) of the Sanskrit word jiva, alternatively called
jya.[1] Aryabhata used the term ardha-jiva ("half-chord"), which was shortened to jiva and
then transliterated by the Arabs as jiba (‫)جب‬. European translators like Robert of Chester
and Gherardo of Cremona in 12th-century Toledo confused jiba for jaib (‫)جب‬, meaning
"bay", probably because jiba (‫ )جب‬and jaib (‫ )جب‬are written the same in the Arabic script
(this writing system uses accents instead of vowels and in some formats the accents are
not written to ease writing, so if the readers are not familiar with the language they might
be confused between words with the same letters but different phonetics). The words
"minute" and "second" are derived from the Latin phrases partes minutae primae and
partes minutae secundae.[2] These roughly translate to "first small parts" and "second
small parts".

Development
Trigonometry is not the work of any one person or nation. Its history spans thousands of
years and has touched every major civilization.

Early trigonometry
Trigonometry and Mensuration|pages=158–159|quote=Trigonometry, like
other branches of mathematics, was not the work of any one man, or
nation. Theorems on ratios of the sides of similar triangles had been
known to, and used by, the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians. In view of
the pre-Hellenic lack of the concept of angle measure, such a study
might better be called "trilaterometry," or the measure of three sided
polygons (trilaterals), than "trigonometry," the measure of parts of a
triangle. With the Greeks we first find a systematic study of
relationships between angles (or arcs) in a circle and the lengths of
chords subtending these. Properties of chords, as measures of central
and inscribed angles in circles, were familiar to the Greeks of
Hippocrates' day, and it is likely that Eudoxus had used ratios and
angle measures in determining the size of the earth and the relative
distances of the sun and the moon. In the works of Euclid there is no
trigonometry in the strict sense of the word, but there are theorems
equivalent to specific trigonometric laws or formulas. Propositions
II.12 and 13 of the Elements, for example, are the laws of cosines for
obtuse and acute angles respectively, stated in geometric rather than
trigonometric language and proved by a method similar to that used by
Euclid in connection with the Pythagorean theorem. Theorems on the
lengths of chords are essentially applications of the modern law of
sines. We have seen that Archimedes' theorem on the broken chord can
readily be translated into trigonometric language analogous to formulas
for sines of sums and differences of angles.}}</ref>

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.[3] Based on one interpretation of
the Plimpton 322 cuneiform tablet (circa 1900 BC), some have even asserted that the
ancient Babylonians had a table of secants.[4] 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.[3] The Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, written by the
Egyptian scribe Ahmes (circa 1680-1620 BC), contains the following problem related to
trigonometry:[3]

"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.[3]

Greek mathematics

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 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.[5]

A medieval artist's rendition of Claudius Ptolemy.

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.[6] For
instance, propositions twelve and thirteen of book two of the Elements are the laws of
cosine 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.[6] To compensate for the lack of a
table of chords, mathematicians of Aristarchus' time would sometimes use the well
known theorem that, in modern notation, sin α/ sin β < α/β < tan α/ tan β whenever 0° < β
< α < 90°, among other theorems.[7]

The first trigonometric table was apparently compiled by Hipparchus of Nicaea (180 -
125 BC), who is now consequently known as "the father of trigonometry."[8] Hipparchus
was the first to tabulate the corresponding values of arc and chord for a series of angles.[1]
[8]

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 B.C.), since he measured an angle in terms of a fraction of a quadrant.[7] 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.[9] 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.[2] It is due to the Babylonian sexagesimal number system
that each degree is divided into sixty minutes and each minute is divided into sixty
seconds.[2]
Menelaus of Alexandria (ca. 100 A.D.) wrote in three books his Sphaerica. In Book I, he
established a basis for spherical triangles analogous to the Euclidean basis for plane
triangles.[5] 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.[5] Another theorem that
he establishes is that the sum of the angles of a spherical triangle is greater than 180°.[5]
Book II of Sphaerica applies spherical geometry to astronomy. And Book III contains the
"theorem of Menelaus".[5] He further gave his famous "rule of six quantities".[10]

Later, Claudius Ptolemy (ca. 90 - ca. 168 A.D.) expanded upon Hipparchus' Chords in a
Circle in his Almagest, or the Mathematical Syntaxis. The thirteen books of the Almagest
are the most influential and significant trigonometric work of all antiquity.[11] 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.[11]
Ptolemy further derived the equivalent of the half-angle formula

.[11] Ptolemy used these results to create his trigonometric


tables, but whether these tables were derived from Hipparchus' work cannot be
determined.[11]

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.[12]

[edit] Indian mathematics


Statue of Aryabhata. As there is no known information regarding his appearance, any
image of Aryabhata originates from an artist's conception.

The next significant developments of trigonometry were in India. Influential works from
the 4th–5th century, known as the Siddhantas (of which there were five, the most
complete survivor of which is the Surya Siddhanta[13]) first defined the sine as the modern
relationship between half an angle and half a chord, while also defining the cosine,
versine, and inverse sine.[14] Soon afterwards, another Indian mathematician and
astronomer, Aryabhata (476–550 AD), collected and expanded upon the developments of
the Siddhantas in an important work called the Aryabhatiya.[15] The Siddhantas and the
Aryabhatiya contain the earliest surviving tables of sine values and versine (1 − cosine)
values, in 3.75° intervals from 0° to 90°, to an accuracy of 4 decimal places.[16] They used
the words jya for sine, kojya for cosine, utkrama-jya for versine, and otkram jya for
inverse sine. The words jya and kojya eventually became sine and cosine respectively
after a mistranslation described above.

Other Indian mathematicians later expanded on these works of trigonometry. In the 6th
century, Varahamihira used the formulas[17]

(a trigonometric equivalent to formulas known by


Thales and Pythagoras[17])

(modern sine and cosine equivalent to a chord


formula known to Ptolemy; see above)

In the 7th century, Bhaskara I produced a formula for calculating the sine of an acute
angle without the use of a table. He also gave the following approximation formula for
sin(x), which had a relative error of less than 1.9%:

Later in the 7th century, Brahmagupta redeveloped the formula

(also derived earlier, as mentioned


above) as well as the Brahmagupta interpolation formula for computing sine values.[18]
Another later Indian author on trigonometry was Bhaskara II in the 12th century.

Madhava (c. 1400) made early strides in the analysis of trigonometric functions and their
infinite series expansions. He developed the concepts of the power series and Taylor
series, and produced the power series expansions of sine, cosine, tangent, and arctangent.
[19][20]
Using the Taylor series approximations of sine and cosine, he produced a sine table
to 12 decimal places of accuracy and a cosine table to 9 decimal places of accuracy. He
also gave the power series of π and the θ, radius, diameter, and circumference of a circle
in terms of trigonometric functions. His works were expanded by his followers at the
Kerala School up to the 16th century.[19][20]

[edit] Islamic mathematics

Al-Khwārizmī depicted on a Soviet stamp

The Indian works were later translated and expanded in the medieval Islamic world by
Muslim mathematicians of mostly Persian and Arab descent, who enunciated a large
number of theorems which freed the subject of trigonometry from dependence upon the
complete quadrilateral, as was the case in Hellenistic mathematics due to the application
of Menelaus' theorem. According to E. S. Kennedy, it was after this development in
Islamic mathematics that "the first real trigonometry emerged, in the sense that only then
did the object of study become the spherical or plane triangle, its sides and angles."[21]

In addition to Indian works, Hellenistic methods dealing with spherical triangles were
also known, particularly the method of Menelaus of Alexandria, who developed
"Menelaus' theorem" to deal with spherical problems.[5][22] However, E. S. Kennedy points
out that while it was possible in pre-lslamic mathematics to compute the magnitudes of a
spherical figure, in principle, by use of the table of chords and Menelaus' theorem, the
application of the theorem to spherical problems was very difficult in practice.[23] In order
to observe holy days on the Islamic calendar in which timings were determined by phases
of the moon, astronomers initially used Menalaus' method to calculate the place of the
moon and stars, though this method proved to be clumsy and difficult. It involved setting
up two intersecting right triangles; by applying Menelaus' theorem it was possible to
solve one of the six sides, but only if the other five sides were known. To tell the time
from the sun's altitude, for instance, repeated applications of Menelaus' theorem were
required. For medieval Islamic astronomers, there was an obvious challenge to find a
simpler trigonometric method.[24]

In the early 9th century, Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī produced accurate sine and
cosine tables, and the first table of tangents. He was also a pioneer in spherical
trigonometry. In 830, Habash al-Hasib al-Marwazi produced the first table of cotangents.
[25][26]
Muhammad ibn Jābir al-Harrānī al-Battānī (Albatenius) (853-929) discovered the
reciprocal functions of secant and cosecant, and produced the first table of cosecants for
each degree from 1° to 90°.[26] He was also responsible for establishing a number of
important trigometrical relationships, such as:[citation needed]

By the 10th century, in the work of Abū al-Wafā' al-Būzjānī, Muslim mathematicians
were using all six trigonometric functions.[27] Abu al-Wafa had sine tables in 0.25°
increments, to 8 decimal places of accuracy, and accurate tables of tangent values.[27] He
also developed the following trigonometric formula:[citation needed]

(a special case of Ptolemy's angle-addition


formula; see above)

Abū al-Wafā also established the angle addition identities, e.g. sin (a + b), and discovered
the law of sines for spherical trigonometry:[25]

Also in the late 10th and early 11th centuries, the Egyptian astronomer Ibn Yunus
performed many careful trigonometric calculations and demonstrated the following
trigonometric identity:

Al-Jayyani (989–1079) of al-Andalus wrote The book of unknown arcs of a sphere, which
is considered "the first treatise on spherical trigonometry" in its modern form.[28] It
"contains formulae for right-handed triangles, the general law of sines, and the solution of
a spherical triangle by means of the polar triangle." This treatise later had a "strong
influence on European mathematics", and his "definition of ratios as numbers" and
"method of solving a spherical triangle when all sides are unknown" are likely to have
influenced Regiomontanus.[28]
The method of triangulation was first developed by Muslim mathematicians, who applied
it to practical uses such as surveying[29] and Islamic geography, as described by Abu
Rayhan Biruni in the early 11th century. Biruni himself introduced triangulation
techniques to measure the size of the Earth and the distances between various places.[30]
In the late 11th century, Omar Khayyám (1048–1131) solved cubic equations using
approximate numerical solutions found by interpolation in trigonometric tables. In the
13th century, Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī was the first to treat trigonometry as a mathematical
discipline independent from astronomy, and he developed spherical trigonometry into its
present form.[26] He listed the six distinct cases of a right-angled triangle in spherical
trigonometry, and in his On the Sector Figure, he stated the law of sines for plane and
spherical triangles, discovered the law of tangents for spherical triangles, and provided
proofs for both these laws.[31]

In the 15th century, Jamshīd al-Kāshī provided the first explicit statement of the law of
cosines in a form suitable for triangulation. In France, the law of cosines is still referred
to as the theorem of Al-Kashi. He also gave trigonometric tables of values of the sine
function to four sexagesimal digits (equivalent to 8 decimal places) for each 1° of
argument with differences to be added for each 1/60 of 1°. Ulugh Beg also gives accurate
tables of sines and tangents correct to 8 decimal places around the same time.

In the 16th century, Taqi al-Din contributed to trigonometry in his Sidrat al-Muntaha, in
which he was the first mathematician to extract the precise value of Sin 1°. He discusses
the values given by his predecessors, explaining how Ptolemy used an approximate
method to obtain his value of Sin 1° and how Abū al-Wafā, Ibn Yunus, al-Kashi, Qāḍī
Zāda al-Rūmī, Ulugh Beg and Mirim Chelebi improved on the value. Taqi al-Din then
solves the problem to obtain the precise value of Sin 1°[citation needed]:

[edit] Chinese mathematics

Guo Shoujing (1231–1316)


In China, Aryabhata's table of sines were translated into the Chinese mathematical book
of the Kaiyuan Zhanjing, compiled in 718 AD during the Tang Dynasty.[32] Although the
Chinese excelled in other fields of mathematics such as solid geometry, binomial
theorem, and complex algebraic formulas, early forms of trigonometry were not as
widely appreciated as in the earlier Greek , Hellenistic, Indian and Islamic worlds.[33]
Instead, the early Chinese used an empirical substitute known as chong cha, while
practical use of plane trigonometry in using the sine, the tangent, and the secant were
known.[32] However, this embryonic state of trigonometry in China slowly began to
change and advance during the Song Dynasty (960–1279), where Chinese
mathematicians began to express greater emphasis for the need of spherical trigonometry
in calendrical science and astronomical calculations.[32] The polymath Chinese scientist,
mathematician and official Shen Kuo (1031–1095) used trigonometric functions to solve
mathematical problems of chords and arcs.[32] Victor J. Katz writes that in Shen's formula
"technique of intersecting circles", he created an approximation of the arc of a circle s
given the diameter d, sagita v, and length of the chord c subtending the arc, the length of

which he approximated as .[34] Sal Restivo writes that Shen's work in the
lengths of arcs of circles provided the basis for spherical trigonometry developed in the
13th century by the mathematician and astronomer Guo Shoujing (1231–1316).[35] As the
historians L. Gauchet and Joseph Needham state, Guo Shoujing used spherical
trigonometry in his calculations to improve the calendar system and Chinese astronomy.
[32][36]
Along with a later 17th century Chinese illustration of Guo's mathematical proofs,
Needham states that:

Guo used a quadrangular spherical pyramid, the basal quadrilateral of which consisted of
one equatorial and one ecliptic arc, together with two meridian arcs, one of which passed
through the summer solstice point...By such methods he was able to obtain the du lü
(degrees of equator corresponding to degrees of ecliptic), the ji cha (values of chords for
given ecliptic arcs), and the cha lü (difference between chords of arcs differing by 1
degree).[37]

Despite the achievements of Shen and Guo's work in trigonometry, another substantial
work in Chinese trigonometry would not be published again until 1607, with the dual
publication of Euclid's Elements by Chinese official and astronomer Xu Guangqi (1562–
1633) and the Italian Jesuit Matteo Ricci (1552–1610).[38]

[edit] European mathematics


Isaac Newton in a 1702 portrait by Godfrey Kneller.

Regiomontanus was perhaps the first mathematician in Europe to treat trigonometry as a


distinct mathematical discipline,[39] in his De triangulis omnimodus written in 1464, as
well as his later Tabulae directionum which included the tangent function, unnamed.

The Opus palatinum de triangulis of Georg Joachim Rheticus, a student of Copernicus,


was probably the first in Europe to define trigonometric functions directly in terms of
right triangles instead of circles, with tables for all six trigonometric functions; this work
was finished by Rheticus' student Valentin Otho in 1596.

In the 17th century, Isaac Newton and James Stirling developed the general Newton-
Stirling interpolation formula for trigonometric functions.

In the 18th century, Leonhard Euler's Introductio in analysin infinitorum (1748) was
mostly responsible for establishing the analytic treatment of trigonometric functions in
Europe, defining them as infinite series and presenting "Euler's formula" eix = cosx +
isinx. Euler used the near-modern abbreviations sin., cos., tang., cot., sec., and cosec.

Also in the 18th century, Brook Taylor defined the general Taylor series and gave the
series expansions and approximations for all six trigonometric functions. The works of
James Gregory in the 17th century and Colin Maclaurin in the 18th century were also
very influential in the development of trigonometric series.

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