Such advances help the digital computer more than the analog, barring some unexpected breakthrough in the accuracy problem of the latter. Digital building blocks become ever smaller, faster, cheaper, and more reliable. Computers that fit in the palm of the hand are on the market, and are already bulky by comparison with those in the laboratory. The analog-digital hybrid most likely will not be new life for the analog, but an assimilating of its better qualities by the digital.
“‘What’s one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one and one?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Alice. ‘I lost count.’
‘She can’t do Addition,’ the Red Queen interrupted.”
—Lewis Carroll
5: The Binary Boolean Bit
In this world full of “bigness,” in which astronomical numbers apply not only to the speed of light and the distance to stars but to our national debt as well, it is refreshing to recall that some lucky tribes have a mathematical system that goes, “One—two—plenty!” Such an uncluttered life at times seems highly desirable, and we can only envy those who lump all numbers from three to billions as simply “plenty.”
Instead we are faced today with about as many different number systems as there are numbers, having come a long way from the dawn of counting when an even simpler method than “one—two—plenty” prevailed. Man being basically self-centered, he first thought in terms of “me,” or one. Two was not a concept, but two “ones”; likewise, three “ones” and so on. Pebbles were handy, and to represent the ten animals slain during the winter, a cave man could make ten scratches on the wall or string out that many stones.
It is said that the ancient cabbies in Rome had a taximeter that dropped pebbles one by one onto a plate as the wheels turned the requisite number of revolutions. This plate of stones was presented to the passenger at the end of his ride—perhaps where we get the word “fare”! Prices have risen so much that it would take quite a bag of pebbles in the taximeter today.