ABSTRACT
There are many important discoveries made over a cup of coffee, and indirectly the scientific calculator owes its origins to a coffee house conversation. On 26 July 1712 Brook Taylor was having coffee at Child’s Coffeehouse in London. Talking with another mathematician of the time he realised that a technique used by Sir Isaac Newton (see Chapter N) and another used by Dr Halley (famous for Halley’s comet) were in fact particular cases of a general case. Taylor, it is said, rushed home after having coffee, to work day and night until he produced his paper on the general series that encapsulated both Newton’s and Halley’s work. The Taylor series formula is: Brook Taylor (1685–1731) https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315069555/5d5201a7-70ac-4d14-a96d-80b2cf916e2e/content/fig0118.jpg"/> f ( a + h ) = f ( a ) + h f 1 ( a ) + 1 2 ! h 2 f 2 ( a ) + 1 3 ! h 3 f 3 ( a ) + … https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315069555/5d5201a7-70ac-4d14-a96d-80b2cf916e2e/content/eqn0083.tif"/>
