of the error is an exponential function of the square of the error. The second law of error is called the normal distribution or the Gauss law. "It is difficult historically to attribute that law to Gauss, who in spite of his well-known precocity had probably not made this discovery before he was two years old."

Daniel Bernoulli (1778) introduced the principle of the maximum product of the probabilities of a system of concurrent errors.Adrien-Marie Legendre