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 -- AccessD mailing list AccessD at databaseadvisors.com http://databaseadvisors.com/mailman/listinfo/accessd Website: http://www.databaseadvisors.com