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Re: Is binary a "language"?

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On Apr 15, 9:40 pm, "BartC" <b...@freeuk.com> wrote:
> "spinoza1111" <spinoza1...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>
> news:29fc0345-1b7b-4e11-bcfe-bde8adebae93@v33g2000prn.googlegroups.com...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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> > 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"
> > ..."
> > 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.
>
> They might have used binary in the same way that an abacus uses binary: each
> 'ring' is either on the left or right; 3 rings on the right is '3'. So 3
> flip-flops on might similarly represent '3'. Otherwise only 4 flip-flops
> would be needed.
>
> I doubt any 'decimal electronic computer' actually stored a decimal digit
> using an analogue quantity.

I believe that in nearly all cases combinations of two state flip
flops (not the sandal the bistable tube), then magnetic cores having
only two directions of magnetization, and so on, were used, never an n-
state device where n is an integer > 2, nor an analogue device where n
is Cantorian aleph 1.

Except perhaps in hybrid analogue computers but in these the existence
of "memory" is hard to separate from "nature".
>
> --
> Bartc

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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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