On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 Bruce Kellett <[email protected]> wrote:
> Maybe because base 12 is more sensible than base 10? The Babylonians, who > had something to do with our numeral system, worked in base 60. Which is > why we have 360 degrees in a circle, etc. I think if we used base 8 computers might have been developed much sooner than they were. Charles Babbage tried to make a computer 150 years ago but it used base 10 and was a mechanical nightmare, and with all those complicated gears and cogs his machine never operated for long without breaking down. If.he used base 2 it would have been far more reliable but to be practical he would have needed to convert the input from base 10 to base 2 and output from base 2 to base 10, and that's tricky. But converting from base 2 to base 8 is far easier. It would be easier to teach children the multiplication table too. John K Clark -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
