Duane writes:
> It was a trinary logic computer. It had 3
> states: off, on, maybe off/on.

Trinary.  Ho hum.  What about fractional bases, or better yet *negative*
bases!  This quote from a post to the Python developer's list from a
couple years ago gives a nice quick introduction:

> Negative bases allow the unique representation of both positive
> and negative integers without use of a sign. For example, "-3" in
> decimal equals, in base -2, "1101" (-3 = 1*(-2)^3 + 1*(-2)^2 +
> 0*(-2)^1 + 1*(-2)^0). It has been suggested that this property
> makes negative bases a more natural representation for integers
> than positive bases. There is more detailed information on the
> subject in [Knuth's] The Art of Computer Programming, Vol. 2.

G.

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