Michael Metcalf wrote:
> It may have been prompted by an article in Physics World
> (http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/31912) which describes 'this
> year' as the anniversary.
It was indeed - Peter Crouch (the main author of that article) was
contacted by the BBC a couple of weeks ago and with his help they put
together that short item. I don't think the implication was that the
anniversary was this month, merely this year.
In response to Loren's question on the code - I recorded the piece on an
SD card on my Bug2 digital radio so have been able to listen to it
several times over. I think the person reading it omitted the
parentheses and maybe other significant punctuation (he should have used
the phonetic puncation system invented by the late Victor Borge) but I
think the code was something like this:
NA = IDENTP - 1
IF(P .LT. RL0) NA = NA - 1
X = P - DBLE(FLOAT(NA))
which gives little clue as to its origin (and only the .LT. indicates
that it's elderly Fortran).
--
Clive Page
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