Decimal tables produced for Napoleon's property taxation system.
The calculation of the decimal tables for Napoleon's property tax was organized by Baron Gaspard de Prony in 1790. De Prony had read Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and seen its description of division of labour, explained with the example of pin production. Smith had said that the making of a pin could be divided into distinct operations given to different labourers: cutting the short lengths of wire, forming the pin head, sharpening the points, polishing the pins, packing them etc. De Prony later recalled that he "conceived all of a sudden the idea of applying the same method to the immense work with which I had been burdened, and to manufacture logarithms as one manufactures pins."
De Prony's "factory" had three sections. In the first section half a dozen mathematicians decided on the mathematical formulas for the calculations. In the second section another small group distributed the computational tasks and collated the results. In the third section about 60 to 80 human computers performed the computations.
The entire system was based on the difference method, which requires only additions and subtractions. The human computers could thus be mathematically unskilled; most were hairdressers who had lost their jobs during the Revolution because "one of the most hated symbols of the ancien régime was the hairstyles of the aristocracy."
Preparation of the Tables required ten years. By 1801 they were ready in manuscript form, but the funds for printing them were never found. When Charles Babbage visited Paris in 1819 he was shown the manuscript in the library of the Académie des Sciences.
Campbell-Kelly, M. and W. Aspray (1996) Computer; a History of the Information Machine. Basic Books, New York.