On Mon, Feb 2, 2015 Bruce Kellett <bhkell...@optusnet.com.au> 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 everything-list+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to everything-list@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
