Factoring[8 616 460 799] like 100 years ago

[EdS2]

Wonderful - thanks for your machine and exposition Thomas, and for the pointer to that paper!

Quote:Soon we were engaged in an active search for its whereabouts in France. We looked for clues at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers (CNAM), the École Normale Superieure, the Institut Henri Poincaré and the Bibliothèque Nationale (BN), without success. We also were unable to contact the company that built the machine, Maison Chateau Frères- they had apparently gone out of business. When a year of intermittent searching failed, we resorted to what seemed at the time a preposterous idea: we would write a letter to each person named Carissan in France and ask for leads. But how to find all the Carissans? Luckily for us, France Telecom provides a computerized database of telephone numbers via the Minitel, a small terminal provided free of charge to Telecom subscribers

I've posted about your video and some related findings over here