Âé¶¹´«Ã½

Letter: E-jinks

Published 19 September 2007

From Richard Breakspear

Your mention of Google’s use of the number e (approximately 2.71828) on advertising billboards (21 July, p 38) reminded me of a story about the physicist Richard Feynman.

While working in Los Alamos during the second world war, the remoteness and lack of entertainment led him to experiment with lock-picking, including opening the combination locks that protected some of his colleagues’ filing cabinets: it is said that he left fictitious notes from a spy in them. .

Shrewsbury, Shropshire, UK

Issue no. 2622 published 22 September 2007

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