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The Apollo Guidance Computer wasn't 15 decimal places; it was 15 bits. The point is that they didn't use power-of-two word sizes back then; they used whatever w
by kens 6y ago
The Apollo Guidance Computer wasn't 15 decimal places; it was 15 bits. The point is that they didn't use power-of-two word sizes back then; they used whatever word size fit the problem, even though that now seems bizarre.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ivanbakel 6y agoBut the number in the article is to 15 decimal places. Pointing out that that precision comes from the size of the modern double-precision floating point representation doesn't really answer why that representation is enough.
- CydeWeys 6y agoIt's a fair point. They would use more decimal places than that if it were necessary, regardless of whatever a double-precision floating point does. Since it's not necessary, the double is adequate (and already widely available by default across programming languages and system architectures).