History of PI
| Pi has always been known to be the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. It was first used by the Babylonians in about 2000 B.C. They said PI= 3 1/8, which was amazingly accurate. The Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Persians, and many other ancient civilizations also calculated pi with amazing accuracy for their time. Whether they knew it or not, ancient civilizations used PI. For example, the ratio of one side to the of a pyramid on Geae was PI:2. Around 420 B.C., two mathematicians, Antiphon and Byrson of Herclea, came up with a brilliant new way to calculate PI. They knew that to calculate PI, they would need a full circle. They figured that if you start with a hexagon and keep doubling theamount of sides (hexagon goes to twelve-sided shape...), you would eventually get a full circle. That way was used for many, many centuries by the best mathematicians like Archimedes, Fibonacci, and Sir Isaac Newton. Many formulas were also devised from that solution. Leonhard Euler was another great mathematician who devised many, many formulas from Antiphon and Byrson's formula. In 1610 a mathematician named Ludolf van Ceulen spent a good part of his life calculating PI to 35 digits. He used a shape with 32 billion sides! Although PI had been known of for about 3,700 years, John Machin became the first person to us in 1706. In the 18th century, the search for PI was approached with brute force. Many calculations prove many others wrong. In 1882, Feridninand von Lindemann proved that PI was transcedental. In the 1940's, calculators revolutionized the search for PI. As calculators got faster, more of PI got calculated. One pair of people that tried to get a record for calculating PI is the Chudnovsky brothers, David and Gregory. Right now the record for most digits calculated, 15.5 billion digits, was calculated on a supercomputer called the Hitachi SR2201 by two Japanese people: Dr. Kanada and Takahashi. |