Richard Crandall, NeXT scientist, writes eloquently on large numbers in February SciAm. He cites cryptographic strength as one result of research on the gargantuan googol and googolplex. He reviews current work on sieve techniques for factorization -- Quadratic, Number Field, Elliptic Curve Method and others -- as well as advanced algorithms. And exclaims: Blaine Garst, Doug Mitchell, Avadis Tevanian, Jr., and I implemented at NeXT what is one of the strongest -- if not the strongest -- encryption schemes available today, based on Mersenne primes. This patented scheme, termed Fast Elliptic Encryption (FEE), uses the algebra of elliptic curves, and it is very fast. ----- GOO_gol Thanks to PJP for pointing.