David Megginson wrote: > > C. Hotchkiss writes: > > > IIRC, 360 degrees is Babylonian in origin. For some reason > > multiples of 12 and the number 360 was very important to them. > > I read that it's how they counted on their fingers. Using your thumb, > touch the top third (near the tip) of each finger for 1-4, the middle > third (between the two knuckles) of each finger for 5-8, and the > bottom third for 9-12. I'm not sure how they combined the second hand > with that, but I think that they used only whole fingers there, giving > the ability to count from 0-60 on their fingers alone.
Cool, I didn't know that. But we can also get a much wider range when we are counting when we use our traditional system. We only need to change from unary (1 finger, 2 fingers, ..., 5 fingers) to a binary system (little finger = 1, ring finger = 2, middle = 4, index = 8, thumb = 16) which gives us a range of 0..31 with one hand! Counting with the base 3 is also possible (0..3^5), but you have to concentrate quite hard! CU, Christian -- The idea is to die young as late as possible. -- Ashley Montague Whoever that is/was; (c) by Douglas Adams would have been better... _______________________________________________ Flightgear-devel mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.flightgear.org/mailman/listinfo/flightgear-devel
