Grosch had proposed a ternary architecture for the Whirlwind, Jay Forrester’s enormous early electronic computer I have the notion that, in one of his novels,

Grosch had proposed a ternary architecture for the Whirlwind, Jay Forrester’s enormous early electronic computer I have the notion that, in one of his novels, Heinlein "let slip" that the story was not only in the future, but also in an alternate timeline, by casually mentioning ternary computers. Which reminds me - in early Heinlein stories, analog computers were "de rigueur", and the other day, in a Fortune mag archive someone posted, I bumped into this 1949 summary: http://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fortune/gschwind/08uu.jpg http://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fortune/gschwind/08uu.jpg (Part of an amazing set of illustrations by Max Gschwind, indexed at http://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fortune/gschwind/a.htm http://www.fulltable.com/vts/f/fortune/gschwind/a.htm - the CAD/CAM workstation of 1956 and the lunar lander of 1962 are neat too.)