Babbage problem: Difference between revisions

{{draft task}}

 

 

[[wp:Charles_Babbage|Charles Babbage]], looking ahead to the sorts of problems his Analytical Engine would be able to solve, gave this example: what is the smallest positive integer whose square ends in the digits 269,696? (Babbage, letter to Lord Bowden, 1837; see Hollingdale and Tootill, <i>Electronic Computers</i>, second edition, 1970, p. 125.) He thought the answer might be 99,736, whose square is 9,947,269,696; but he couldn't be certain.

 

;task

 

For these purposes, Charles Babbage may be taken to be an intelligent person, familiar with mathematics and with the idea of a computer, who has never programmed—in fact, who has never so much as seen a single line of code.

 

;task aim