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Re: Is binary a "language"?

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spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> writes:

> On Apr 12, 11:00 pm, "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <p...@informatimago.com>
> wrote:
>> "osmium" <r124c4u...@comcast.net> writes:
>> > "Pascal J. Bourguignon" wrote:
>>
>> >> Decimal computers used electronic tubes with ten states.
>>
>> > Can you provide a reference to such a computer that ever got out of
>> > someone's basement?  My guess is that you can not.
>>
>> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
>>
>> Perhaps you could learn some computing history.  
>> After all it's less than a hundred years of history, even a lazy bumb
>> could have some notions.
>
> "ENIAC used ten-position ring counters to store digits; each digit
> used 36 vacuum tubes, 10 of which were the dual triodes making up the
> flip-flops of the ring counter. Arithmetic was performed by "counting"
> pulses with the ring counters and generating carry pulses if the
> counter "wrapped around", the idea being to emulate in electronics the
> operation of the digit wheels of a mechanical adding machine. ENIAC
> had twenty ten-digit signed accumulators which used ten's complement
> representation and could perform 5,000 simple addition or subtraction
> operations between any of them and a source (e.g., another
> accumulator, or a constant transmitter) every second. It was possible
> to connect several accumulators to run simultaneously, so the peak
> speed of operation was potentially much higher due to parallel
> operation."
>
> But ... weren't the tubes themselves bistable? Isn't this why they are
> called "flip flops"? Without being an electronics whiz it looks to me
> as if the ENIAC, just like the 1401, was an over-elaborate simulation
> of decimal based on binary devices.
>
> I maintain that you need to go back to adding machines with ten
> position wheels to get n above two.
>
> Or, analogue computers where n = aleph-one, that is, nondenumerable
> infinity.


The flip-flops weren't used to store bits, but to emulate in hardware
the workings of a mechanical adding machines.

Thanks to pointing this out, it's even funnier.

While the ENIAC was a decimal computer, it indeed used binary
components, but wired in such a way as to provide ten-state hardware.

It's funny how they choosed this more complex set-up than a purely
binary design.  A clear case of "width of the shuttle".
http://www.astrodigital.org/space/stshorse.html


So we'll have to fall back to the Russians's Сетунь for the development
of a ternary, 3-state electronic tubes-based computer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun
http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/setun.htm



-- 
__Pascal Bourguignon__                     http://www.informatimago.com/
A bad day in () is better than a good day in {}.

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Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-12 05:57 -0700
  Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-12 16:33 +0200
    Re: Is binary a "language"? "osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2011-04-12 09:46 -0500
      Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-12 17:00 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? "osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2011-04-12 10:11 -0500
        Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 06:07 -0700
          Re: Is binary a "language"? "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-04-15 14:40 +0100
            Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 06:58 -0700
          Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-15 19:23 +0200
            Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 07:19 -0700
              Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-17 02:30 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? Thad Smith <ThadSmith@acm.org> - 2011-04-24 15:37 -0700
      Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 06:01 -0700
    Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-15 05:40 -0700
      Re: Is binary a "language"? "Pascal J. Bourguignon" <pjb@informatimago.com> - 2011-04-15 19:12 +0200
        Re: Is binary a "language"? spinoza1111 <spinoza1111@yahoo.com> - 2011-04-16 07:15 -0700

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