its not about transistors, its about charge in magnetic tape, there millions of seperate magnetic bits on a tape and the point either north or south, north being 0 south being 1. And its read by the computer.
You are talking about rom. The first computers didn't even have rom, all they had was ram, which was not in the form of magnetic tape.
]]>I have this idea in the back of my head that there might be a more "natural" number system than base10. Maybe we should have base "e"?
]]>But by far, the coolest base is -2:
0110 0110: 34 or 1*(-2)^1 + 1*(-2)^2 + 1*(-2)^5 + 1*(-2)^6
Genius! I never thought of a negative base.
Does it have any wonderful uses (apart from confounding humans)?
]]>What is the total number of number systems that have been established today not counting decimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal number system?
Imperial: 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 6 feet in a fathom, 660 feet in a furlong, 5280 feet in a mile (6080 in a nautical mile), not to mention pints, gallons, quarts, pecks, bushels, roods, poles, perches et al.
And old British money required great arithmetic skill: 12 pennies in a shilling, 20 shillings in a pound. And a guinea was 1 pound and one shilling, wasn't it? Clerks, shopkeepers and accountants had to deal with this without thinking.
So ... lots!
]]>(Whoever thought up binary and applied it to computers was a genius...)
It came naturally because transistors only have two states.
But by far, the coolest base is -2:
0110 0110: 34 or 1*(-2)^1 + 1*(-2)^2 + 1*(-2)^5 + 1*(-2)^6
its not about transistors, its about charge in magnetic tape, there millions of seperate magnetic bits on a tape and the point either north or south, north being 0 south being 1. And its read by the computer.
]]>The Babylonians used a base-60 number system. Yikes...how did they get anywhere with base 60?
Clocks seem to cope well enough.
]]>(Whoever thought up binary and applied it to computers was a genius...)
It came naturally because transistors only have two states.
But by far, the coolest base is -2:
0110 0110: 34 or 1*(-2)^1 + 1*(-2)^2 + 1*(-2)^5 + 1*(-2)^6
]]>The Babylonians used a base-60 number system. Yikes...how did they get anywhere with base 60?
]]>What is the total number of number systems that have been established today not counting decimal, binary, octal and hexadecimal number system?
And what are they?
]]>