Re: Metric Time (was Re: Why not 13 months? (Was La Systeme Metrique))
Teemu Peltonen (teemup@linux.teleste.fi)
13 Oct 1995 10:05:36 GMT
Maynard Handley (handleym@apple.com) wrote:
> Regardless of the merits of base, why are there so many people who think
> the way you count has something to do with the number of fingers you
> have? Did you people learn nothing in elementary school?
When the base-10 was invented (some million years before Columbus made his
big mistake), they didn't have elementary schools. They had their fingers
and used them. You have ten fingers (you being a "standard" human) and so
base-10 is natural choice.
If we had 16 fingers or could move our fingers to only two positions, we
would probably be using base-16 or base-2.
--
teemup@teleste.fi | http://www.teleste.fi/~teemup/
Pascal, ASM, HTML | This message is copyrighted by Teemu Peltonen 1995.
Ham: OH1JHX | You may not distribute it to Microsoft Network.
|