Flip up your Windows calculator (or Mac equivalent)and you'll see in the upper left "Hex", "Dec", "Oct", and "Bin" for all the alternative-base number systems which are much easier for computing. Hexidecimal simply sythesiszes 6 new characters for the numbers 10-15, denoting them as A-F, so they become "fundamental" base numbers.
As someone who writes a lot of C++ code for lab use, hexidecimal is indispensible. Nat >>>>> Sorry, Marcus, but there is NOTHING magic about the number 10. If we had grown up with 12 fingers, and had a numbering system based on 12 (e.g., extracting from hexadecimal: 0, 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, 10, 11...), it would appear every bit as "natural" as decimal does to us now. Our brains would be very comfortable with it, and using an "odd" number like 10 for a base would seem weird and uncomfortable. Imagine someone used to base-12, where 1/3 = 0.4. Then you tell him that in decimal 1/3 = 0.33333..... and he would say "What a crummy system!!!" For those of us who have spent years working in binary, octal and hexadecimal, this is pretty obvious. "10" is special through familiarity, not due to anything else. Jim Elwell, CAMS Electrical Engineer Industrial manufacturing manager Salt Lake City, Utah, USA www.qsicorp.com
