Human Computers – Use of Floating-Point Arithmetic

Question

Before the proliferation of computers in the 1950s, did human computers use floating-point formats for their computations?

Floating-point calculation was reportedly implemented already in the 1910s (Wikipedia), so one might assume the idea must have been in circulation way earlier than that. However, I haven't found any information how people were computing back then. Since most human computer work must have been numerical, they may have used floating-point calculations.

Answer 1

In the field of hydrodynamics the first calculation by a human computer was carried out around 1920 for a project to transform an open sea into a closed lake, with the aim to protect Holland from flooding. The physicist Hendrik Lorentz headed a task force to calculate the effect of the dike on the tidal flow.

The human computer was the hydraulic engineer Jo Thijsse. Lorentz commented as follows on this work:

The numerical calculations were so lengthy, that we came close to the ultimate limit of what can be done in this way. I myself had no part in this. I did try once or twice to set up and work out such a calculation, but then it would turn out that I had made a mistake, so that it had to be done all over again by others.

The hydrodynamic calculation involved quantities differing by many orders of magnitude, and so necessarily required floating point arithmetic. Here is one page from their report, showing the exponential notation.