Random number book
Cryptology tool
A random number book is a book whose main content is a large number of random numbers or random digits. These books were used in early cryptography and experimental design, and were published by the RAND Corporation and others. The RAND Corporation book A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates was first published in 1955 and was reissued in 2001. A sequel, A Million And One Random Digits was published in 2022. Tables of random numbers have probably been used for multiple purposes at least since the Industrial Revolution. A table of random numbers was made by L.H.C. Tippett.
Random number books have been rendered obsolete for most purposes by the ready availability of random number generators running on electronic computers. However, they still have niche uses, particularly in the performance of experimental music pieces that call for them, such as Vision (1959) and Poem (1960) by La Monte Young.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Random number book”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Random digits.png by RAND Corporation, Public domain
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