JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post
Very little is pretty as pie, especially when there’s more than one. Double that for pi. I happened to be breezing through an 1829 book of mathematical formulas by C.P. Biel and found this lovely section on an extended computation of pi.It occurs on page 38, and carries pi out to 155 places–which for the time was very significant. (Pi was computed to 9 places by Francoise Viete in 1579; 15 places by Adriaan van Roonan, 1593; 32 by Ludolph van Ceulen in 1596; 35 by Willebrord Snell in 1621; 38 by Christoph Grienberger; 75 by Abraham Sharp in 1699; 100 by John Machin in 1706; 137 by Jurj Vega in 1794; and 152 by Legendre in 1794.)
In any event, it is a lovely display.
And so to for the multiplication of pi:
