Very interesting and true! UP voted!

I worked for a military contractor once, and had an assignment to create an infinite precision math library. I did it with Prolog which dealt with the digits of a number as a list of digits from 0 to 9, rather than their binary equivalent.

I don't know how it was used but I did complete the library. Whether it would have solved the problems you wrote about, I don't know, but maybe! Thanks for reminding me about this precision issue!