The Best of Frederik Pohl by Frederik Pohl

Author:Frederik Pohl [Pohl, Frederik]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

True, it is not that any of the predecessors of the decimal system is likely to make a comeback. There is, for instance, vanishingly little chance that we will return to the Babylonian sexagesimal (to the base 60) system-though that is a tough old bird and will not be finally dead as long as we count 60 minutes to the hour, and 360 degrees to the circle. There are traces of systems to other bases surviving in such terms as "score" and the French word for 80, "quatre-vingt," suggesting an extinct system to the base 20; and in terms like "dozen," "gross," and so on, which appear to derive from a system to the base 12.

In science fiction most of the speculation on numbering systems of the future has dwelt on this base 12 ("duodecimal") system, but it is hard to understand why. It is argued that a 12-digit system simplifies writing "decimal" equivalents of such fractions as *1/4 and 1/6, but that seems a small reward for the enormous task of conversion. Setting aside the merits or demerits of the duodecimal system itself, think of the cost of such a change. For a starter, our decimal system of coinage either goes down the drain, to be replaced by a new one, or lingers on as a clumsy anachronism like the British Ł/s/d. And that cost is only the bare beginning. Science is measurement and interpretation; without measurement, interpretation is foggy soul-searching; and measurement is number. Change our system of writing numbers, and you must translate nearly the entire recorded body of human knowledge-lab reports and tax returns, cost estimates and time studies, knowledge about the behavior of nu mesons, and knowledge about transactions on the New York Stock Exchange.

The project of converting the world's essential records from one system of numbering to another staggers the mind. Its cost is measurable not merely in millions of dollars, but in perhaps millions of man-years.

That being so, why is this enormous project now in process?

The answer is, simply, that machines aren't any smarter than Russian peasants.

This is not meant to run down the Russians, but only to observe that UNIVAC and Ivan have a lot of things in common-and one of these things is a lack of skill in performing decimal multiplication and division.

Let's take a simple sum-say, 87 x 93-and see how it would be done by us, by Ivan, and by UNIVAC. You and I, having completed at least a couple of years of grade school, write down a compact little operation like this:

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