It is the best of times for the game of factoring large numbers into their prime factors. In 1970 it was barely possible to factor "hard" 20-digit numbers, in 1980, in the heyday of the Brillhart-Morrison continued fraction factoring algorithm, factoring of SO-digit numbers was becoming commonplace. In 1990 my own quadratic sieve factoring algorithm had doubled the length of the numbers that could be factored, the record having 116 digits.