On Wed, May 8, 2013 at 10:08 PM, Joel C. Ewing <[email protected]> wrote: > On 05/08/2013 08:02 PM, Lloyd Fuller wrote: >> >> Not sure. I was just talking one time to one of the military people that >> were >> involved with Univac and the university (Oregon State, I think). He >> mentioned >> that they had experimented with it. And from the time frame you are >> probably >> correct that it was transistors rather than IC's. >> >> Lloyd >> >> >> >> ----- Original Message ---- >> From: Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) <[email protected]> >> To: [email protected] >> Sent: Wed, May 8, 2013 4:28:58 PM >> Subject: Re: OT - What is the proper term for "K" notation? >> >> In <[email protected]>, on >> 05/06/2013 >> at 06:02 AM, Lloyd Fuller <[email protected]> said: >> >>> Actually, Univac played with it back in the 1960s/1970s. >> >> Any ternary logic or memory in the 1960's was probably implemented >> with discrete transistors rather than with IC's. >> > The Soviets actually built a computer model (Setun) with ternary logic in > 1958, fifty built before production was finally halted in 1965. > See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ternary_computer > and > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun > Those articles don't go into much detail, but other sources describe memory > as being ternary as well, using two magnetic cores for a single ternary > digit or two tracks on drum memory. Their ternary approach was apparently > an ingenious solution to minimize costs within the constraints of existing > technology. > > If the Soviets were trying that route, that alone would probably have caused > our military to explore it. I would speculate that once large-scale > integrated circuits tailored for binary logic became universally available, > that effectively guaranteed that computers with binary logic and memory were > much cheaper to build than ternary computers and probably explains why > binary computers eventually replaced ternary development in the Soviet Union > as well. > > -- > Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected] > Ternary, with values of 0,1,2, could be useful in a binary addition logic. You are only going to store 0 or 1, and the 2 represents a delayed carry of 1+1.
-- Mike A Schwab, Springfield IL USA Where do Forest Rangers go to get away from it all? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
