Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu> writes:
> Historical tidbit... you may wonder how GR is mnemonic for
> "base" and POT is mnemonic for "power" as in ((mexpt) GR POT).
>
> It turns out that the macsyma simplifer owes its roots to a program
> written by Knut Korsvold in 1963 or so at Stanford University. It
> seems that Knut's native language (Norwegian?) has words for these
> parts. I don't know what they really are, but I think they are
> something like grosse and potenz.
I think it's "grunntal" (grunn = base, tal = number) and "potens" in
Norwegian.
--
Cheers,
Jesper Harder