There's a degree 10 polynomial here, but it has an integer root, which seems to be what they computed. This can be achieved just by factoring the leading and tr

There's a degree 10 polynomial here, but it has an integer root, which seems to be what they computed. This can be achieved just by factoring the leading and trailing coefficients, and by various other easy methods. It's not really anywhere near as difficult as computing an approximation to the root or solving in radicals (when that's possible). Edit: OK I see on one of the other pages they were finding rational approximations to a root. That is pretty clever for the time.