Ah, you young rascals! If people had 10-position relays half a century ago, perhaps the digital computing crowd would have done that.
There was a time that digital and analog computers existed side by side and were actually in competition. I've programmed and operated analog computers and one can indeed improve upon dividing a piece of information into more than 2 states, in fact into more than 10 states. Those who espoused the use of such devices shunned digital emulation because even more precision was to be had by remaining analog in the calculation processes, for a given amount of hardware. I'm not aware of any serious attempts to build base-10 computational networks, but perhaps some existed. I know that at least some feeble attempts were made, but the added expense for the hardware is probably what killed that. The telephone dialer circuits (which are "count up" devices, and once used stepping relays) were probably the closest that anything like that came to prolonged existance. I remember only the battle between binary and analog as being significant. And, no, it was not the LEDs that drove the digital folks to binary, Madan. LEDs didn't exist then. Jim M R wrote: .... > "Actually the above is a cheap excuse. Unfortunately > the problem here is that these guys decided to build > computers using a binary number of bits, i.e. 4 bits, > 8 bits, 16 bits, 32 bits, etc (AARRGHH!!). Had they > been more user-friendly to the decimal system and they > would have created 10-bit, 20-bit, 30-bit, etc > computers, alas! IMHO there is no reasonable > justification to use binary powers for bit buses. > What can I say?... :-S" > > Even if they build a computer of 10 bits, it will have > 1024 characters (2^10) and not 1,000 characters. > The reason for base 2 is the > LED (Light emitting diode) glows. > 0 when light is off & > 1 when light is on. > > If we want pure metric. They should have a system > through which 1 bit gives 10 values from 0-9 instead > of 2 values. Then > 2 bits will give 100 characters > 3 bits will give 1000 characters, etc. .....
