Integers vs. Long Integers Was: RE: [AccessD] Global Variable

John W. Colby jwcolby at colbyconsulting.com
Thu May 19 11:33:46 CDT 2005


>But you could only store 8 values in each "digit"

Yep.  I have no idea why octal was used.  It was "just the norm" in the Navy
(back then) and since (in 1972) I was 17 years old and had never even seen a
computer before, it never occurred to me to question it.  Bear in mind that
these machines were designed and built in 1958 or thereabouts, I learned to
fix them (and they were still in use) in 1972 when I was in the Navy
schools.  That is what all the Univac machines that I learned to fix used,
even the much more modern machines that I learned towards the end of my
"career" in the Navy - ~1977-78.

>Look up Byte :-)

Yep, I know about byte.

John W. Colby
www.ColbyConsulting.com 

Contribute your unused CPU cycles to a good cause:
http://folding.stanford.edu/

-----Original Message-----
From: accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com
[mailto:accessd-bounces at databaseadvisors.com] On Behalf Of Stuart McLachlan
Sent: Thursday, May 19, 2005 12:19 PM
To: Access Developers discussion and problem solving
Subject: RE: Integers vs. Long Integers Was: RE: [AccessD] Global Variable


On 19 May 2005 at 9:40, John W. Colby wrote:

> Look up octal.  The registers on all the Sperry Univac machines that I 
> learned in the Navy had little neon lights behind plastic buttons with 
> springs in them with switches in them.  Thus each button displayed the 
> value of a bit and the button could be pressed to set the bit when 
> hand programming them.  The registers were "grouped" into 3 bits, each 
> group represented an octal "digit" (which I quote since digit is 
> specifically decimal).  The entire machine, and all of its 
> instructions were documented in octal.

But you could only store 8 values in each "digit"
Look up Byte :-)

-- 
Stuart


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