EXCEL thinks 5/64 is a date (May 1, 1964), and it is giving
you a representation of the date in "Number" format.

I obviously need to "revisit"................

you may need to format col A as fractions and then enter 5/64 without the
apostrophe.

It's actually converting it to a DATE (5/1/1964)
then displaying it as the number of days since 1/1/1900

Let me play with it for a bit and see if I can figure out how to handle it.

Excel thinks it's a date: May 1, 1964

If you enter 5/64 in a cell, Excel will probably convert it to 5/1/1964
automatically.

To enter the fraction 5/64, you have to enter =5/64.

To get the results you want in A2, try
=LEFT(A1,SEARCH("/",A1)-1)/RIGHT(A1,LEN(A1)-SEARCH("/",A1))