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I'm not sure why the author included 'floating point' in the title (probably to hint that the Babylonians did not use a symbol for zero, and had the point float
by kutkloon7 9y ago
I'm not sure why the author included 'floating point' in the title (probably to hint that the Babylonians did not use a symbol for zero, and had the point floating in blank space). To technical-minded people, floating point is synonymous with hardware that computes using a floating point representation, so this is a bit deceiving.
- pvg 9y agois synonymous with hardware Wait, no it isn't. It's about the representation (in contrast to 'fixed point'), the hardware is an implementation detail.
- jacobolus 9y agoThe ancient Mesopotamian (Sumerian/Akkadian) system was floating point. The exponent was implied rather than explicitly written though. So 1/120, 1/2, 30, and 1800 were all written the same way. Modern 'scientific notation' is also floating point.
- kutkloon7 9y agoAhh, that explains a lot. Thanks.
- kps 9y agoFor a century up to the 1970s most engineering calculations were done to three decimal digits with implied-exponent floating point hardware¹. ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slide_rule
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]