111 Years Ago, Indiana Almost Legislated Pi

General
Feb 062008

Via Slashdot: On February 5, 1897, 111 years ago today, the Indiana legislature very nearly passed a bill ‘introducing a new mathematical truth,’ that would have erroneously established pi as the ratio ‘five-fourths to four’ or 3.2. The story explaining the rationale behind the bill and how they were prevented from legislating it when a real mathematician intervened is quite interesting, because the man who discovered the ‘new mathematical truth’ wanted to charge royalties, which could have made pi the first form of irrational property.

Posted by mike at 9:41 am Tagged with:

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