TOKYO, Oct 4: A Japanese man seeking a world record on Wednesday spent a sleepless 16 hours reciting by memory the mathematical number pi down to the 100,000th digit.

Akira Haraguchi, a consultant in suburban Tokyo, started on Tuesday at 9:00am and did not rest until 1:30am as he read out pi — the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter which has an infinite number of decimal points.

The 60-year-old took only a 10-minute break every one to two hours as he read out pi at a public conference hall in front of local officials, who took turns monitoring his progress.

“He had a special way to remember the numbers by thinking up names to accompany sets of digits,” said an official in Chiba prefecture’s Kisarazu city whose city hall hosted the feat.

Haraguchi had previously recited 83,431 digits and would apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.

Although onlookers were amazed at his memory, Haraguchi himself apparently was not.

“I didn’t feel anything particularly sensational. I just poured out what was in my mind. But I am happy about the achievement of 100,000 digits,” Kyodo News quoted him as saying.—AFP