Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!rutgers!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!osu-cis!att!cbnews!lvc
From: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c
Subject: Re: non-binary hardware
Message-ID: <1135@cbnews.ATT.COM>
Date: 10 Sep 88 01:41:59 GMT
References: <1285@mcgill-vision.UUCP> <297@sdti.UUCP>
Reply-To: lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM (Lawrence V. Cipriani)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Columbus
Lines: 23

>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?

I heard of a base -2 computer, that was built.  For those that don't
know how this would work here is a short table of numbers in base -2.

	4    -2     1
	-----------------
	0  +  0  +  0  = 0
	0  +  0  +  1  = 1
	0  +  1  +  0  = -2
	0  +  1  +  1  = -1
	1  +  0  +  0  = 4
	1  +  0  +  1  = 5
	1  +  1  +  0  = 2
	1  +  1  +  1  = 3

It's been so long, I forget where I read about it.  As I recall the
authors conclusion was that this technique wasn't worth the trouble.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems, Columbus OH, cbnews!lvc lvc@cbnews.ATT.COM