111 Years Ago, Indiana Almost Legislated Pi

I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "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."

Comments

Re:Blashphemy !

[mysticgoat]

Pi is, in fact, equal to neither of those numbers, nor to 3.14159 26535 89793 23846 26433 83279 50288 41971 69399 37510. It is an irrational number for which any representation in digits is an approximation.

So all contemporary engineering and technology, anything using circles or cycles in any measurable way, is based on an irrational concept. Which is to say that all of Western Civilization's proudest accomplishments are basically irrational.

That's a good thing to keep in mind.

Re:Blashphemy !

[Digital Vomit]

Oh, right. They hadn't invented the advanced concept of "rounding off" or "rough estimate" at that time. Silly me.

(My OP was modded down -2 and Thanshin's lame response was modded +5 Informative? Could Slashdot modders be any more blatantly biased?)