On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 11:05:17 +1000, John Machin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>On Wed, 13 Apr 2005 08:28:29 -0400, Roy Smith <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, >> "Dan Bishop" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >>> But there's no reason other than tradition why you should arrange them >>> into groups of 10. >> >>Well, it is traditional for people to have 10 fingers :-) > >According to anthropology archives, there was once a tribe called >"OS/360 system programmers" who would cut off their thumbs and great >toes in order that they might better count in hexadecimal. > I suspect using four dates back to the nixie tribe, who practiced bi-quinary. And they would cut off little toes and fingers rather, because then the thumb was more significant and it was easier to remember it as 5 (or 0 if hidden) with the rest counting octally ;-) Regards, Bengt Richter -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
