Pi calculated to five trillion digits

LONDON - The value of Pi has been calculated to five trillion digits by a Japanese engineer who took 90 days to do it on a computer he made himself.

Fiftyfive-year-old Shigeru Kondo, who works as systems engineer for a food company based in northern Japan, broke the earlier record of 2.7 trillion digits that was established late last year.

The calculation of the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter took a good 90 days and seven hours, Daily Telegraph quoted Kyodo news agency as saying.

Kondo said that the gargantuan calculation nearly hit a hurdle when his daughter tripped a circuit breaker after a hair dryer was turned on. The computer switched to an 10-minute back-up power source, thus saving the project.

He also removed casings from the computer and blew cool air onto the machine with fans.

The self-made computer cost 11,550 pounds to make and has a hard-drive capacity of 32 terabytes.

The engineer now aims to try and compute the value of Pi to 10 trillion digits.

His wife Yukiko, though, is not too happy as the computer consumed a lot of energy, hiking the electricity bill.