On 2016-02-27 20:57, Paul Koning wrote:
On Feb 27, 2016, at 2:49 PM, Bill Cunningham <[email protected]> wrote:
Thanks much. Yes I know you were speaking of assembly. I was just considering
history. I've always heard binary was first. What that might mean IDK. And
there was no evidence presented for that.
It may just be a case of people not familiar with early documents,
extrapolating from the fact that early programming was in machine language and
many early machines were binary. In other words, overlooking the fact that the
use of octal or even decimal would be a pretty natural choice even right at the
beginning.
Yes. In fact, from what I remember, decimal was used on many early
computers. And you didn't really program them they way we think now. You
didn't necessarily even have memory in the way we think now. Programming
was done by connecting wires on large boards similar to telephone switches.
Octal is a natural extension once you go binary. But really early on,
people obviously was thinking decimal, and thus the computers were too.
Johnny
--
Johnny Billquist || "I'm on a bus
|| on a psychedelic trip
email: [email protected] || Reading murder books
pdp is alive! || tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol
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