el camino bignum

2 definitions found

el camino bignum - Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (26 May 2007) :

  El Camino Bignum
  
     <humour> /el' k*-mee'noh big'nuhm/ The road mundanely called
     El Camino Real, a road through the San Francisco peninsula
     that originally extended all the way down to Mexico City and
     many portions of which are still intact.  Navigation on the
     San Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino
     Real, which defines logical north and south even though it
     isn't really north-south many places.  El Camino Real runs
     right past Stanford University.
  
     The Spanish word "real" (which has two syllables: /ray-al'/)
     means "royal"; El Camino Real is "the royal road".  In the
     Fortran language, a "real" quantity is a number typically
     precise to seven significant digits, and a "double precision
     " quantity is a larger floating-point number,
     precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other
     languages have similar "real" types).
  
     When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he
     remarked what a long road El Camino Real was.  Making a pun on
     "real", he started calling it "El Camino Double Precision" -
     but when the hacker was told that the road was hundreds of
     miles long, he renamed it "El Camino Bignum", and that name
     has stuck.  (See bignum).
  
     [Jargon File]
  
     (1996-07-16)
  

el camino bignum - Jargon File (4.4.4, 14 Aug 2003) :

  El Camino Bignum
   /el' k@.mee'noh big'nuhm/, n.
  
     The road mundanely called El Camino Real, running along San Francisco
     peninsula. It originally extended all the way down to Mexico City;
     many portions of the old road are still intact. Navigation on the San
     Francisco peninsula is usually done relative to El Camino Real, which
     defines logical north and south even though it isn't really
     north-south in many places. El Camino Real runs right past Stanford
     University and so is familiar to hackers.
  
     The Spanish word `real' (which has two syllables: /ray.ahl'/) means
     `royal'; El Camino Real is `the royal road'. In the FORTRAN language,
     a real quantity is a number typically precise to seven significant
     digits, and a double precision quantity is a larger floating-point
     number, precise to perhaps fourteen significant digits (other
     languages have similar real types).
  
     When a hacker from MIT visited Stanford in 1976, he remarked what a
     long road El Camino Real was. Making a pun on `real', he started
     calling it `El Camino Double Precision' -- but when the hacker was
     told that the road was hundreds of miles long, he renamed it `El
     Camino Bignum', and that name has stuck. (See bignum.)
  
     [GLS has since let slip that the unnamed hacker in this story was in
     fact himself --ESR]
  
     In the early 1990s, the synonym El Camino Virtual was been reported
  as
     an alternate at IBM and Amdahl sites in the Valley.
  
     Mathematically literate hackers in the Valley have also been heard to
     refer to some major cross-street intersecting El Camino Real as "El
     Camino Imaginary". One popular theory is that the intersection is
     located near Moffett Field -- where they keep all those complex
     planes.