Note 8 — EULER.

We suspect some mistake in this account, which is constantly given. A very surprising story ought to be consistent: now it is difficult to believe that any series which was actually employed in practice (and people do not sum series to fifty places for amusement) would converge so quickly, as to give fifty places in seventeen terms. The well-known series for the base of Napier’s logarithms is called a rapidly converging series, and gives about fifteen places in seventeen terms. We cannot help thinking, either that Euler settled one disputed term only, or that there is some mistake about the number of figures.