Tuesday, January 10, 2012

What is the name of the mathematician who first used a computer to calculate pi?

The mathematician was John von Neumann, the almost-computer was the ENIAC electronic calculator at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Harford County, Maryland, and the date was the Labor Day holiday weekend of 1949. Von Neumann and two of his colleagues rigged the machine's plugboard programming in various clever ways, and calculated pi to 2035 (2037?) digits before Monday morning when the machine had to go back to its regular task of calculating artillery range tables.

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