Babylon's Tablet of Root 2

Around 1800 BCE, Babylonian mathematicians inscribed on a clay tablet (YBC 7289) a 6-digit approximation of the square root of 2: 1 + 24/60 + 51/60² + 10/60³. That value is accurate to six decimal places (roughly 1/2,000,000), which is extraordinary precision for the time.

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