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Robert Walker
Factorizing large numbers. Back in 1903, Cole gave a famous talk in which he demonstrated that he had found the two factors of the number 2^67-1

"In 1903 Cole famously made a presentation to a meeting of the American Mathematical Society where he identified the factors of the Mersenne number 267 − 1, or M67. Édouard Lucas had demonstrated in 1876 that M67 must have factors (i.e., is not prime), but he was unable to determine what those factors were. During Cole's so-called "lecture", he approached the chalkboard and in complete silence proceeded to calculate the value of M67, with the result being 147,573,952,589,676,412,927. Cole then moved to the other side of the board and wrote 193,707,721 × 761,838,257,287, and worked through the tedious calculations by hand. Upon completing the multiplication and demonstrating that the result equaled M67, Cole returned to his seat, not having uttered a word during the hour-long presentation. His audience greeted the presentation with a standing ovation. Cole later admitted that finding the factors had taken "three years of Sundays"."

Three years of Sundays - that's 156 weeks, so equivalent to ab0ut 5 months of full time 7 day weeks, or about 31 weeks, more than half a year, of five day weeks.

Nowadays much larger numbers can be factorized in a fraction of a second using fast prime factorization algorithms.

About the Author

Robert Walker

Robert Walker

Writer of articles on Mars and Space issues - Software Developer of Tune Smithy, Bounce Metronome etc.
Studied at Wolfson College, Oxford
Lives in Isle of Mull
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