The problem remained unsolved for a number of years, due partly to the difficulty of computing the huge numbers involved in the solution. The general solution was found in 1880 by Carl Ernst August Amthor (1845–1916), headmaster of the "Gymnasium zum Heiligen Kreuz" (Gymnasium of the Holy Cross) in Dresden, Germany. Using logarithmic tables, he calculated the first digits of the smallest solution, showing that it is about formula_1 cattle, far more than could fit in the observable universe. The decimal form is too long for humans to calculate exactly, but multiple precision arithmetic packages on computers can write it out explicitly.