[EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK]

Long before Carmack, a precomputed table of cosine values has been used in a vacuum-tube based surface-to-air missile system I have been maintaining. The table consisted of only one element: 0.7, i.e. the cosine of any angle was considered 0.7. Somehow, it was good enough for intercepting jet fighters and saved a lot of vacuum tubes.

[setr]

Wasn’t this also the basic JD of “computers” of old? Manually computing lookup tables for artillery, planet movement, etc