ABSTRACT
The first calculations known to have been made for the spectral radiant exitance of a blackbody using Planck's equation were performed in early October of 1900. Tables for many of the more important quantities relating to blackbody radiation were also to be found in many discipline specific texts where the topic of thermal radiation arose. The first period encompasses the very earliest of tables up until 1939. Thereafter, the production of tables devoted to thermal radiation slowed before almost completely disappearing as former users of these tables took full advantage of the growing computational abilities offered by relatively inexpensive and widely available digital computers. A. Brill in the German astrophysical text Handbuch der Astrophysik presented a number of tables for various quantities relating to thermal radiation. The first sheet of M. Katherine Frehafer's 1925 publication was devoted to a discussion of the various laws of thermal radiation and gave values of the constants used in the computations.
