This came from the early days of Turbo Pascal, when it had no long integers (just shorts). So I added that functionality just as an exercise (learning how to work with numbers bigger than 8 or 16 bits).

This lead to Toad Hall Infinite Math, with "integers" with up to 64,000 digits. That also had stubbed code for "virtual" integers (actually stored on separate files on the hard drive) that could potentially be up to the size of the hard drive!

That was mostly a fun thing, just to learn how to work with huge arrays and virtual arrays (we were inventing them then, you see). I saw no practical use for being able to count the stars in the sky .. but surprisingly an astrophysicist found a use for the silly thing! Amazing ...

Regrettably Infinite Math was lost in a disk crash, and I never could locate that astrophysicist again to get a copy back.

Oh well ...

David Kirschbaum
Toad Hall