I recently came across a column by Pat Truly in the 3 March 1997 Fort Worth Star-Telegram that dealt exclusively and humorously with Indiana. Curious about what led to the proposal, Truly looked for answers but didn't find any, leaving him rhetorically free to propound a couple of his own. Another hypothesis had to do with accounting for the oval shape of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway , built in 1909.
Pie are round.
Though I had to laugh, I noticed that Truly managed in six hundred words to hit on almost every stereotype that people in other states appear to hold about Indiana. His column instilled in me a curiosity about this episode that he, perhaps, only feigned. Still, the inexactness of this ratio has apparently bedeviled a certain breed of mathematicians for centuries. Indiana's unfortunate place in the odd history of circle squaring is prominent because of how close the legislation came to passing. Authored by Edwin J. Goodwin, M.D., of Posey County, who was eccentric, yet, from what I can tell, fairly typical of circle-squarers, and introduced by Representative Taylor I. Record, a Posey County farmer who understood none of its tortuous language, the bill found its way to the Committee on Canals, Swamplands, and Drains, where Speaker Henry C. Pettit hoped it would never be heard from again.