Seems plausible. But, to start with, what evidence is there this person truly existed? Say, for instance, on some Columbia or math genealogy site?
="Dan Asimov" <dasimov@earthlink.net>
<< The web tells me that a Carl Leffler, a Columbia math prof, was contracted around 1930 to produce 6000 cards with all with unique ³Bingos², and that the effort drove him insane, despite his ultimately billing at a rate of $100/card (eg http://www.strangelife.com/bingodoc/bingohist.html).
I
haven't found any reliable documentation about the claim he went insane
(which could have a lot of meanings). One site said the price per card
gradually rose, eventually to $100 as Leffler found it increasingly hard to
generate new cards, presumably because it was increasingly hard to verify
that a new card wasn't the same as an old card. Which suggests he didn't
bother to come up with an algorithm before proceeding, or else his algorithm was flawed. Which would make anyone grumpy, but not necessarily insane.
He
was reportedly elderly at the time, and senile dementia may have been just as common in those days as now. So he may well have "gone insane", but it seems unlikely to me that this was caused by the bingo project.
--Dan Even though
kleptomaniacs can't help themselves, they do.
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