The Howdy Glossary

The Laning and Zierler system, also known as LAFD (Laning and Zierler Factoring Decomposition), is a method for factoring large numbers with the help of computers. It was developed by Richard W. Hamming under supervision of Lester R. Ford at Bell Labs in 1949, but it wasn't implemented until Alston S. Householder's efforts in 1951 due to lack of computational power at the time. The method uses binary arithmetic to factor numbers into their prime components, which is important in cryptography and number theory for testing the security of algorithms based on large prime numbers.As a piecewise algorithm, it can be used for any size composite number that doesn't have small factors within its group structure. The Laning and Zierler system isn't used much today due to more efficient methods such as the quadratic sieve or the general number field sieve being available with modern computing capabilities allowing faster results than LAFD could provide at the time of its creation.