Homepage of P. Christopher Staecker: Napier's Bones

Napier's Bones is an old tool used for multiplying a large number by a single digit. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Napier's_Bones for lots of info.

About the bones

Here's a short video I made about Napier's Bones.

This is part of my series of videos about antique computational devices. Here is the full series playlist

Download & Images

Here is a two-page PDF with a high-quality image of the bones. If you print this on 8½×11 paper, each bone will be 1 inch wide, which is the perfect size to be glued onto paint-stirring sticks. Make sure they all line up.

Below is a SVG of the Bones generated by JavaScript in the code of this page. It looks small but it'll scale to whatever size you want without losing quality. This code is public domain. You are free to use this code for any purpose.

Other stuff