Genaille's Rods

Volume 3, Issue 2
Spring 1993

Henri Genaille's Rods are a nineteenth-century device for doing multiplication, similar to, but easier to use than, the more familiar Napier's Bones. Genaille's Rods are visually attractive and useful in teaching. This article shows how to use Mathematica to draw the required diagrams, which can then be cut out with scissors and passed to wooden rods to make an accurate set of rods.