e - The second most famous transcendental number Of the irrational, transcendental numbers, pi seems to get all the attention. Its digits have been computed to 1,241,100,000,000 decimal places. In the silver medal place is e (2.71828 18284 59045 23536....). Only 1,250,000,000 of its decimal digits have been computed so far. It's been called the logarithmic constant, Napier's number, Euler's constant, and the natural logarithmic base. I call it just plain e. It was the first transcendatal number I calculated on my old Apple II computer over 20 years ago. Running all night it calculated e to more than 50,000 decimal places. Two Math nerds, inventor Harlan J. Brothers and meteorologist John A. Knox, have a web site with over 20 ways to calculate this fundamental constant. Of particular interst is a recent paper just published this year entitled "Improving the convergence of Newton's series approximation for e". It's a good read and makes me want to tackle the computation with a more substantial computer than a 1 MHz 8 bit processor of 20 years ago.