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To: Wizzer who wrote (10941)	4/29/1998 3:10:00 PM
From: IngotWeTrust	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 116764

The Discovery Channel hosted by David Hartley (Good Morning AM former host) presented a fascinating show of the advent of computers from the earliest gear driven adding machines that were the size of about 4 22 cu' refrigerators. Since they re-run such programming on cable, maybe you can still find it and view it in your area. Then, by the 50's we had reduced them to a single computer taking up the equivalent cubic space of a filled floor to ceiling High School Gymnasium to hold all the wiring, racks, tubes, power supplies, knobs, lights, human interfaces, etc., etc., etc. Thus, saving 2 digits is more than just a pica character width on a typewriter. FOR EXAMPLE... in the binary code system, (and I'm SURE someone will come along and give the correct 0I code) just to create the numeral 1 in an 8 bit system meant it took 8 columns to do so. Here's what I mean. Computers are basically switches, okay? They only know Off and On, which is represented by a 0 which equals OFF, and I which equals ON Therefore, in an 8 bit/column if you please system the numeral 1 might be represented in the following code string: 0000001 the number 2 0000010 and so on. Therefore, by the time you got to 99 you would have used all the possible combinations of these 8 bytes/columns. Have I lost you so far? Now if each column was physically represented in cubic dimensions the size of say 2 22cu' refigerations, can you imagine how many more "refigerator sized dimensions" you would require to get a number into the 100's let alone the 1000's let alone the 2000's? Miniaturization/via advent of transistorization "shrunk the referigerators" (<---pardon the pun, Rick Moranis), but it just didn't occur to "them"--the inventors of transistors--to incorporate the 4 digit solution at that juncture. Now to add to the confusion... we are now leaving 16 byte/columns of O's and I's systems and are now in the 32 byte/columns of O's and I's systems a/w/a 64 byte systems. I sure hope this helps.