Study math for long enough and you will likely have cursed Pythagoras’s name, or said “praise be to Pythagoras” if you’re a bit of a fan of triangles.

But while Pythagoras was an important historical figure in the development of mathematics, he did not figure out the equation most associated with him (a2 + b2 = c2). In fact, there is an ancient Babylonian tablet (by the catchy name of IM 67118) which uses the Pythagorean theorem to solve the length of a diagonal inside a rectangle. The tablet, likely used for teaching, dates from 1770 BCE – centuries before Pythagoras was born in around 570 BCE.

  • MonkderZweite@feddit.ch
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    1 year ago

    There’s a copy of Wikipedia on the moon and the orbiting Tesla. With a shelf live of a few billion years.

    • Elohim@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      Luckily the moon is a quick day-trip away in case we return to sticks and stones.