> I checked a few 19th century school books, including Robinson's Shorter
> Course: A Complete Algebra (1874) and J. Stockton's The Western Calculator
> (1828) for any reference to scientific notation and found none. Jeff
> Miller may be right that the term scientific notation is much more recent
> in origin.
The _term_ is probably recent: I don't remember seeing it before seeing
my first pocket calculator manual in the early 1970s. McCracken's
"A Guide to Fortran Programming" (Wiley, New York, 1961) did not use
the words when describing E field specifications on p.17 or p.48.
But the _notation itself_ is much older (and that's what Cajori might help
with - I can't get into the library on Easter Monday to check.) For
example, Jeans "Theoretical Mechanics" (Ginn, Boston, 1907) says on p238
"The earth's mass is 6 x 10^27 grammes..." I do not, of course, think
it likely that that was the first use of the notation; it is merely the
first use in books I happen to have to hand.
John Harper, School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences,
Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand
e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)471 5341 fax (+64)(4)495 5045