Great writeup by @lopp who picked up where I left off in 2017: https://blog.lopp.net/running-bitcoin-core-v0-7-and-earlier/
Probably the greatest academic 'mic drop' in history: In 1903, Frank Nelson Cole of the Columbia University delivered a "talk" with the title 'On the Factorization of Large Numbers'.
Apparently he, silently, wrote the following on the blackboard:
2^67 - 1 = 147,573,952,589,676,412,927 = 7,618,383,257,287 x 193,707,721
and then walked out (or something).
p. 183 of Singh "Number Theory step by step".
(2^n -1 was one of a list of numbers Mersenne had claimed to be prime).
Account migration complete!
@lopp@mastodon.social is now @lopp (@lopp.social)
Welcome back, followers!
Cypherpunk · Co-founder & CTO of Casa · creator of http://bitcoin.page, http://lightning.how, http://statoshi.info