State of the Art in Factoring
1977: Inventors encrypt a challenge using “RSA129,” a 129-digit number n = pq.
1981: Pomerance invents a new factoring method.
1994: RSA129 factored over an 8 month period using 1000 computers on the Internet around the world.
With this method, a 250-digit number would take 100,000,000 times as long.