• Neil Sloane started collecting number sequences when he was a graduate student at Cornell University in the mid-1960's, in an attempt to identify a sequence that had arisen in the work on his dissertation.
• For the full story, see his article "My Favorite Integer Sequences", in Sequences and their Applications (Proceedings of SETA '98), C. Ding, T. Helleseth and H. Niederreiter (editors), Springer-Verlag, London, 1999, pp. 103-130. Available in pdf or postscript format.
• The idea of a "dictionary" of integer sequences was received with enthusiasm by many people, and in 1973 Academic Press published
  A Handbook of Integer Sequences,

  containing about 2400 sequences.

• Over the next twenty years an enormous amount of new material arrived, preprints, reprints, postcards, typewritten letters, handwritten letters, etc., and it was not until 1995 that - with Simon Plouffe's help - the sequel appeared:

  

  The Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences,
  N. J. A. Sloane and S. Plouffe, Academic Press, San Diego, 1995, 587 pp.
  ISBN 0-12-558630-2.

  This contained about 5500 sequences.

• The book is still useful since it contains many of the most important sequences. The database (which is now maybe a thousand times the size of the book) is too huge to use except as a reference.
• Additional information about the book, including links to reviews, can be found here.
• Some reviews will be mentioned in the last demonstration page.

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