Re: [HM] base 5
Ed Sandifer (SANDIFER@WCSUB.CTSTATEU.EDU)
Mon, 12 Apr 1999 21:17:31 -0400
I learned a base 3 arithmetic using the digits +1, 0 and -1, from
R. W. Hamming at the University of Pennsylvania in the summer of 1967.
At the time, he thought that perhaps core memory could be designed to
have either no magnetic field, a clockwise one, or a counterclockwise
one, and so that perhaps this base 3 arithmetic would become the
"natural" base for computer applications.
To my knowledge, he was only wrong about a very few things.
Ed Sandifer