Either medicine proved less fascinating than Recorde had anticipated, or less lucrative. Over the next decade, he moved from medicine to finance and oversaw mints in Bristol, London, and Dublin. The writer's life, however, clearly appealed to him.
He produced a large and varied body of work: theological tracts defending Protestantism, poems, and most importantly, textbooks. Not only did Recorde explain astronomy, geometry, and arithmetic in successive textbooks, but he explained them in English. Previous works on mathematics were written in Latin, meaning the only people who could read them already had an extensive education. Recorde wrote in English for the British layman.
For these busy learners, he came up with his most famous invention. His final book, The Whetstone of Witte , published in , gave the world the equals sign. Perhaps a man trained to study urine and keep control over currency has a pragmatic mind. Recorde found it irritating to have to state over and over that one side of an equation was equal to the other side. He wrote, with obvious annoyance and whimsical spelling, "And to avoide the tedious repetition of these woordes, is equalle to, I will sette as I doe often in woorke use, a paire of paralleles.
What symbol could be more appropriate than a pair of equal-length lines? Nothing, Recorde explained, "noe 2 thyngs, can be moare equalle.
Recorde's symbol didn't catch on at first. The language of Latin still held sway during the 16th century. Before the equal sign came into popular use, equality was expressed in words. Interestingly, Harriot also used parallel lines to denote equality.
John Wallis, a British logician and mathematician, used similar symbols in The modern sign for "not equal to" is an equal sign with a slash through it. This symbol is attributed to Leonhard Euler, a Swiss mathematician who lived from to Ashley Seehorn has been writing professionally since Her work has been featured on a variety of websites including: eHow, Answerbag and Opposing Views Cultures.
She has been a teacher for 20 years and has taught all ages from preschool through college. She is currently working as a Special Education Teacher. There were a great many problems, all outside his control, which meant that the project never had a chance to succeed. The technology needed to mine the silver was the subject of a dispute with German miners who operated the mines.
In addition the treasury would have needed to invest a great deal of money in the venture before they would have seen a return and this they were not able, or perhaps not willing, to do.
The Earl of Pembroke certainly did not give Recorde support and by , with the mines showing a loss, the project was closed down and Recorde was recalled to England.
There were other difficulties which were caused by the illness of Edward VI. He showed the first signs of tuberculosis in January and various factions sought to influence his successor, particularly after May when it was clear to everyone that he was quite close to death. The Church of England had been established in by Mary's father and Recorde was a supporter of the Reformation.
During the next three years over heretics were burned at the stake earning her the title "bloody Mary". Mary rewarded his loyalty by making him a privy councillor. When it became clear that Mary would marry Philip there was a rebellion and Pembroke led Mary's troops against the rebels in early in It was really a very stupid move on Recorde's part, therefore, when in he attempted to charge Pembroke with misconduct in order to regain his court position.
Of course it is almost certain that Recorde had a valid case against Pembroke but there was no way that someone so close to Mary and Philip would allow a minor civil servant like Recorde to get the better of him. Pembroke countered Recorde's charges by suing Recorde for libel, the bill being served on 16 October The hearing took place in January and, almost inevitably, the Earl of Pembroke won his action against Recorde. Either Recorde could not pay this sum, or he chose not to, for he was imprisoned.
If indeed he could not pay it was doubly unfortunate for Recorde since he was owed exactly this amount for his services in Ireland which he had never received. In the King's Bench prison in Southwark, he made a will on 28 June leaving small amounts of money to his four sons and five daughters.
He died in the prison, probably no more than a few weeks later. If Recorde showed little common sense in his argument with the Earl of Pembroke, this was in stark contrast to the remarkable good sense and learning which he showed in all his academic work. Recorde virtually established the English school of mathematics and first introduced algebra into England.
He wrote many elementary textbooks and he did this with a very deliberate policy in mind. Firstly he wanted to produce a complete course of mathematical instruction and he wrote his books in the order in which he thought that they should be studied in a mathematics course. It was a course of study which he wanted to be available to everyone, not just the few educated men who could read Latin or Greek. He therefore wrote all his books in English and, in addition, he tried to use clear and simple expressions.
In order to do this he had to introduce many new English words to be the equivalent of the Latin or Greek terms in use at that time. It would be nice to think that some of these carefully chosen terms might have survived, but sadly none of them have.
Anyone who reads Recorde's works will be led to believe that, although no evidence survives, he must have taught for some time since he has a deep understanding of how to teach. Ideas are developed clearly step by step, with difficult points being left until the student has gained enough experience to understand them.
Although he used the works of others as a basis for much of his work, he certainly did not follow these slavishly, rather picking the best ideas and discarding others.
It is clear that when he read a book he always did so critically which, although not remarkable today, certainly was in the 16 th century when education was still largely based on slavishly following the classic writers without question.
Recorde published The Grounde of Artes in which was a very successful commercial arithmetic book
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