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Epilogue

While we were tracing the origin of the existence problem of the plane of order 10, we asked Dan Hughes, who has worked in this area for a long time and is famous for the Hughes planes which are named after him. He recounted the following story. In about 1957, at a Chinese restaurant in Chicago, Reinhold Baer, another mathematician well known for his work in group theory and projective planes, was trying to impress the younger Hughes by remarking that if the plane of order 10 was settled by a computer, he hoped not be alive to see it. Baer got his wish but I do not think Herb Ryser shared this opinion. Ryser was happy that the weight 12 case was settled by a computer. I can only extrapolate and hope that he would also be happy that the whole problem has been ``settled'', even if by a computer.