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Oughtred is best known for his invention of an early form of the slide rule. He invented many new symbols.
Oughtred was an Episcopal minister. In 1604 he became vicar of Shalford and later of Albury.
Oughtred's most important work, Clavis Mathematicae (1631), included a description of Hindu-Arabic notation and decimal fractions and a considerable section on algebra. He experimented with many new symbols including x for multiplication and :: for proportion.
Oughtred used 
in Clavis Mathematicae but not for the ratio of the circumference to the diameter, merely for the circumference. Other notation for greater than and less than proved hard to remember and were not accepted, the familiar > and < being due to Harriot at almost the same time.
Oughtred is best known for his invention of an early form of the slide rule. Edmund Gunter (1620) plotted a logarithmic scale along a single straight two foot long ruler. He added and subtracted lengths by using a pair of dividers, operations that were equivalent to multiplying and dividing. In 1630 Oughtred invented a circular slide rule. In 1632 he used two Gunter rulers so that he could do away with the dividers.
The present form of the slide rule was designed in 1850 by a French army officer, Amedee Mannheim.
References elsewhere in this archive:
Tell me about Oughtred's trigonometric notation
Tell me about Oughtred's notation for
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