non-binary hardware

[Lawrence V. Cipriani]

>In article <1285 at mcgill-vision.UUCP> mouse at mcgill-vision.UUCP (der Mouse)
>writes:
>By the way, does anyone know of a non-mechanical digital calculator or
>computer that isn't essentially binary?

I heard of a base -2 computer, that was built.  For those that don't
know how this would work here is a short table of numbers in base -2.

	4    -2     1
	-----------------
	0  +  0  +  0  = 0
	0  +  0  +  1  = 1
	0  +  1  +  0  = -2
	0  +  1  +  1  = -1
	1  +  0  +  0  = 4
	1  +  0  +  1  = 5
	1  +  1  +  0  = 2
	1  +  1  +  1  = 3

It's been so long, I forget where I read about it.  As I recall the
authors conclusion was that this technique wasn't worth the trouble.

-- 
Larry Cipriani, AT&T Network Systems, Columbus OH, cbnews!lvc lvc at cbnews.ATT.COM