Re: [math-fun] Devil in the Details

David Wilson:

I concocted the Spiral of Theodorus myself once. Though I figured it wasn't original, I am chagrined that I was beaten by 2500 years.

My introduction to the spiral was by way of Col. Robert Stanley Beard's drawing of it, as published in his 1973 "Patterns in Space". In 1979, I asked (in the Journal of Recreational Mathematics 11:4, p. 301) if the radial lines ever coincide. It took two years (compared to the usual one) but in 1981, Duane Allen (JRM 13:4, p. 300) provided a solution. You can imagine my surprise (last week) when I discovered that E. Teuffel had already proven in in 1958.