Next assignment Dear Lord, time ago You have started the Project of which I am a Guardian. You have approved it under the condition that it should be discontinued as soon as any of its Species evolves enough to estimate the Unit Circle Circumference to a trillion plus one digits. Since it is now evident that the moment is close at hand, I would be glad to know what is going to be my next assignment. Faithfully Yours, Archangel Gabriel   Stan Sýkora, on train from Mons to Brussels, 1996 Reading about the steady progress in computing the number π, I got scared.In 250 BC we knew about 3.5 digits (Archimedes), in 1600 AD it was 35 digits (Ludolf van Ceulen), in 1706 AD 100 digits (Machin), in 1844 it doubled to 200 digits (Dase) and in 1947 we had 808 digits (Ferguson). Then came the computers: 2038 digits in 1949 (von Neumann), 10 thousands in 1958 (Genuys), 100 thousands in 1961 (Shanks), 1 million in 1973 (Gilloud et al.), 16 million in 1975 (Kanada et al.), 201 million in 1987 (Kanada et al.), ... π = 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 ...tick, tick, tick, ... Knowledge opens doors to many things, both useful and dangerous. This is just one of those least likely to be dangerous. There are some which are dangerous for sure. Log Cabin | English Library | Stan's Library Stan's HUB Copyright ©2004 Stanislav Sykora    DOI: 10.3247/elcl09.028 Designed by Stan Sýkora