Chapter 24 - Counting on your fingers
The next chapter digs inside the computer a bit, but before we look at that it would be as well to describe
how computers count: they do it using the binary
system, which means that they have no fingers - they are
all thumbs.
Most European languages count using a more or less regular pattern of tens - in English, for example,
although it starts off a bit erratically, it soon settles down into regular groups:
twenty, twenty one, twenty two,...,twenty nine
thirty, thirty one, thirty two,...,thirty nine
forty, forty one, forty two, ...,forty nine
& so on, & this is made even more systematic with the Arabic numerals that we use. However, the only
reason for using ten is that we happen to have ten fingers & thumbs.
Now suppose Martians have three extra fingers on each hand (in so far as one can call them fingers): so
instead of using our decimal system, with ten as its base, they use a hexadecimal (or hex, for short)
system, based on sixteen. They need six extra hex digits in addition to the ten that we use, & they happen
to write them as A, B, C, D, E & F. And what comes after F? Just as we, with ten fingers, write 10 for ten,
so they, with sixteen, write 10 for sixteen. Their number system starts off:
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