Life before Random Number Generators

Before hardware pseudo-random number generators were commonplace, random numbers used to be published in large books.

One such book: ‘A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates’ was published in 1947, and was primarily used for statistics and scientific experiments. Many scientific simulations require a source of random numbers, and this was a cheap and easy method of obtaining them. Its source of randomness was a simulation of a roulette wheel, which were then tested to confirm they did appear as random.

This is a good example of where pseudo-random numbers are sufficient for some applications. Historically, truly random numbers were hard, expensive and slow to produce.

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