HP Forums

https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1...76,5282043

Now I wonder, why?

Not enough ram? No proper large digits (for a 4bit ALU) routines to handle such large number?

Then 23 * 39 * 46 * 61 , 12 seconds? I mean I know that it was the 1954, but I would have expected less than 5 seconds.

Could someone explain / has more data?

No I can't explain (though: a 48 bit-mantissa probably wasn't uncommon in those days and would explain it), but the final paragraph in the news article does show a signifcant level of, shall we say, mathematical ignorance on the part of the journalist. So perhaps we should not take the rest of the article too seriously either?

Assuming that the 'electronic brain' was an IBM 650 (most likely possibility) it would not have been able to produce a 16-digit decimal result. Precision of a 650 was 10 digits with sign. Even after the introduction of floating point hardware in 1955, the 650 would not have been able to handle 89^8 at full precision.