Timeline for History of powers beyond squares and cubes
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
7 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Nov 23, 2021 at 8:01 | history | edited | Martin Sleziak | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
http -> https (the question was bumped anyway)
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| Sep 20, 2021 at 12:03 | comment | added | Franz Lemmermeyer | @Gerry: Not really. They used factorization techniques for computing square roots and reciprocals, but only regular factors (those dividing powers of 60). There are a couple of examples of division with remainder by 7, 11 or 13, but no prime factorizations involving primes $> 5$. | |
| Sep 20, 2021 at 1:54 | comment | added | Gerry Myerson | So they were just one step away from the Cunningham Project, homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~ssw/cun/intro | |
| Oct 1, 2015 at 17:21 | comment | added | R.P. | It should be mentioned that the tablet containing the list of powers of $9$ is of Late Babylonian origin (which is the era from approx. 400 BC to 100 BC). In this era we also encounter mathematicians like Euclid, who of course uses powers implicitly throughout the Elements (just think of the summing of the geometric series). | |
| Sep 30, 2015 at 16:46 | history | edited | Franz Lemmermeyer | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 232 characters in body
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| Sep 26, 2015 at 16:28 | comment | added | R.P. | That's amazing! And in A Remarkable Collection of Babylonian Mathematical Texts by Jöran Friberg I read that tablet MS 2205 gives $20^{12}$ and $20^{16}$. Friberg thinks these numbers may represent exercises in computing square roots, although to some extent of course that remains guesswork. | |
| Sep 26, 2015 at 16:10 | history | answered | Franz Lemmermeyer | CC BY-SA 3.0 |