This column could have been a little better written:
Here’s the Wikipedia entry. It contains some references to other articles about this bill:
Here’s the FAQ from sci.math about the bill:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/sci-math-faq/specialnumbers/lawPieq3/
The bill was not about pi at all. It was about squaring the circle. It doesn’t mention pi at all. If you tried to make the calculations in the bill or the pamphlet it was defending consistent, you could reconstruct that pi must have any of several different values, but there’s no reason to believe that either the author of the bill (Taylor E. Record) or the author of the pamphlet that the bill is defending (Edwin J. Goodwin) knew or cared what pi was. There’s no evidence that anyone in the Indiana legislature knew or cared what pi was. They voted for the bill because it was just a resolution requiring no action by the state. This was a typical case of a legislator putting up for vote a resolution about a subject he didn’t even understand as a favor to a constituent. The rest of the legislature, who knew even less about what the bill was about than he did, voted for it because it was understood that resolutions which require no real action by the state are nothing but a legislator being nice to a constituent who is interested in some oddball subject that didn’t mean anything to anyone in the legislature.