Re: [USMA:38926] Re: Discussion on the metric systemThanks Pat. That's a nice history of decimal computation; however, it briefly gets into how binary is used to represent decimals. Babbage invented the programmable binary computer. From this binary, octal, decimal & hexadecimal were invented so decimal & text characters and binary could be used for many purposes in the same machine.
One of the King's of England mathematicans invented the binary system when the King, who had more than five wives, asked for a way to indicate which number wife he currently was with to avoid people embarrassng themslves since he was limited to five fingers on one hand. He didn't want to use two hands to show his Court. That way the King could show more than five with one hand. One hand could show up to 31. Machines started out in decimal because of our 10 fingers and 10 toes and then Babbage invented the binary programmable computer because it was more efficient for computations. Then in the late 1950s and early 1960s machines were extended to do decimal computation directly in hardware rather than in software. IBM invented the hexadecimal to provide for all types of international characters and many special symbols. Regards, Stan Doore ----- Original Message ----- From: Pat Naughtin To: U.S. Metric Association Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 2:42 PM Subject: [USMA:38929] Re: Discussion on the metric system Dear Stan, I think that you will be interested in the description of old calculating machines that can be found at: http://www.xnumber.com/xnumber/non-decimal.htm This suggests that the first 'computer' was a base-10 machine called the 'Pascaline' that was made, as a commercial venture, by Blaise Pascal in 1644. Also of interest in this article is the development of binary arithmetic , by Gottfried Leibniz, in 1679 and the development of his 'Digital Adder'. The article says: 'This device has an astonishing similarity to the binary adder of modern digital IC in our computers!' Cheers, Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont 3216 Geelong, Australia 61 3 5241 2008 Pat Naughtin is manager of http://www.metricationmatters.com an internet website that focuses on the many issues, methods and processes that individuals, groups, companies, and nations use when upgrading to the metric system. Contact Pat Naughtin at [EMAIL PROTECTED] On 2007 06 20 1:30 AM, "STANLEY DOORE" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: The base 10 number system was devised because humans have 10 fingers and 10 toes. Early computers were designed to work on the base 2 (binary) number system which is more efficient and it's used primarily by the scientific community. Later, non-scientific computers have been built on base 10 to accommodate most of people's activities. Regards, Stan Doore ----- Original Message ----- From: Mike Millet <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: U.S. Metric Association <mailto:[email protected]> Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2007 10:55 AM Subject: [USMA:38925] Discussion on the metric system All, I was browsing Digg today and happened to notice that there was an article about nations who had not yet adopted the metric system. Digg is more of a social news site where people can comment on the posts, and I thought it might be interesting for the list to read some of the comments. http://digg.com/general_sciences/Nations_who_have_not_yet_adopted_the_metric_system_pic#c7261085 Mike
