Mindful Musings

On continuing my personal search for education and all things cool, michel led me to Russian Ternary computers from the turn of the century. The idea is really cool and seemed like it would work at the time. The basic principle was that instead of working with binary numbers, they worked with ternary numbers. Brousentsov’s Ternary Principle suggested that “the result of some weighing is expressed in the ternary number system by using three numerals namely: 1 (the positive unit), 0 (zero) and `1 (the negative unit).” The number base three idea follows from the original Fibonacci equations and formulae and were actively followed in Russia.
For those of you interested in this arcane yet extremely interesting computational mathematics, you can read more about it in “History of Computing in Russia and the USSR“. Apparently, Moscow University spent a great deal of money and resources looking at just this idea.
This would also make it easier to compare and come up with three pronged logic problems which require nested if and while loops (or extra temporary variables) to solve with our present implementation of binary numbers. I wish I could come up with a better example, but it completely alludes me this late at night.
Enjoy!