Our current system of decimal or base ten numbering is a kludge.

Ten is an awkward number. If you divide it by two, all you get for your troubles is five, and five is of no interest to anybody but Robert Anton Wilson. The only other number by which ten is divisible is five, which just gets you right back where you started. Twelve is much cooler! You can factor the hell out of it! Ten is strictly from hunger.

Have you ever been at a restaurant with two friends and tried to divvy up the check? I rest my case!

I have to admit that eight-bit bytes don't map onto duodecimal any better than onto decimal, but it's no worse either. Hex will always be with us, and that's just fine. Hex is cool, as far as it goes; but duodecimal rules. Duodecimal also gives us a round number of Apostles, which might come in handy some time.

Du`o*dec"i*mal (?), a. [L. duodecim twelve. See Dozen.]

Proceeding in computation by twelves; expressed in the scale of twelves.

-- Du`o*dec"i*mal*ly, adv.

 

© Webster 1913.


Du`o*dec"i*mal, n.

1.

A twelfth part; as, the duodecimals of an inch.

2. pl. Arch.

A system of numbers, whose denominations rise in a scale of twelves, as of feet and inches. The system is used chiefly by artificers in computing the superficial and solid contents of their work.

 

© Webster 1913.

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