Discovery of a Lost Factoring Machine
J. Shallit, H. C. Williams and F. Morain
In this paper, we discuss our discovery of a lost factoring
machine, built by a French amateur, E.-O. Carissan, around 1919.
The machine was located in the
Observatoire de Bordeaux in
Floirac, France, where it had been sitting in a drawer for approximately
fifty years.
Recently, this machine acquired a new home at the
Conservatoire
Nationale des Arts et Métiers in Paris.
This paper has appeared in the Mathematical
Intelligencer 17 (3) (Summer 1995), 41-47, and
a French version in
La Revue, No. 14, March 1996.
Click here for additional color pictures of this
machine.
shallit@graceland.uwaterloo.ca