Turtles all the way down

111 years ago, the Indiana legislature tried to define pi. But they picked the wrong value.

1897: Egged on by an amateur mathematician, the Indiana General Assembly almost passes a bill adopting 3.2 as the exact value of pi (or π). Only the intervention of a Purdue University mathematician who happens to be visiting the legislature prevents the bill from becoming law, saving the most acute political embarrassment.

What became known as the Indiana pi bill was sponsored by Rep. T.I. Record at the behest of Edwin J. Goodwin, a physician and math dilettante who claimed to have figured out how to square circles.

House Bill 246, proposed as “an act introducing a new mathematical truth,” went through three reads before being passed unanimously by the House, presumably to avoid having to endure a fourth.