Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!necntc!necis!mrst!sdti!turner
From: turner@sdti.UUCP (Prescott K. Turner)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: non-binary hardware (was: Absolute size of 'short')
Summary: HP calculator
Message-ID: <297@sdti.UUCP>
Date: 9 Sep 88 13:34:49 GMT
References: <1285@mcgill-vision.UUCP>
Reply-To: turner@sdti.UUCP (Prescott K. Turner, Jr.)
Organization: Software Development Technologies, Sudbury MA
Lines: 16

In article <1285@mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse@mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse)
writes:
>By the way, does anyone know of a non-mechanical digital calculator or
>computer that isn't essentially binary?

A couple of years ago I attended a presentation by Prof. William Kahan 
of U.C. Berkeley.  He had an HP calculator with him which as I recall
adhered to the IEEE 854 standard for floating point using _decimal_.
An example of decimal integers would be better in some ways, but given
the stringent rounding requirements of the IEEE floating point standards,
this calculator's essence could only be called decimal.

--
Prescott K. Turner, Jr.
Software Development Technologies, Inc.
375 Dutton Rd., Sudbury, MA 01776 USA        (508) 443-5779
UUCP:genrad!mrst!sdti!turner