They are sometimes called the Prussian Tables after Albert I, Duke of Prussia, who supported Reinhold and financed the printing.

Reinhold calculated this new set of astronomical tables based on Nicolaus Copernicus' De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, the epochal exposition of Copernican heliocentrism published in 1543.

Rather, the Prussian Tables became popular in German speaking countries for nationalistic and confessional reasons, and it is through these tables that Copernicus's reputation was established as a skilled mathematician or an astronomer on a par with Ptolemy, and helped to disseminate the Copernicus' methods of calculating the positions of astronomical objects throughout the Holy Roman Empire.

Christopher Clavius used Reinhold's Prutenic Tables and Copernicus' work as a basis for the calendar reform instituted under Pope Gregory XIII.

Gingerich wrote about his explorations and their results, and the role of Reinhold's Prutenic Tables, in The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (2004).