Throughout the history humans have always been in need of counting. We have been counting people, animals, food, etc. As the need for counting has stayed intact, the countable subjects that needs to be counted had grown exponentially. It sure was easy to understand the low quantities as it is effortless to tell five tally marks is five but after some point, in case of large quantities we needed to sit and count them all. Mathematical operations were too hard to perform. After all it wasn’t an easy task to count one by one after every operation (addition, subtraction, etc.) Some other solution was needed. We were in need of comprehending quantities, as well as performing operations with them in an easy way.
Positional Notation
Instead of tally marks, which is quite confusing after some point, we have started to use symbols. We have been using only one symbol which represented 1 which was in base 1(unary) number system and obviously was an issue. So, might a different symbol for every increment have been a solution? After some point it is nearly impossible to memorize all the symbols. This is when number systems have been started to use by people. These systems have fewer symbols or numerals. The position of these numerals determines numbers. There is no need for memorizing anything. And performing mathematical operations can be done rapidly and effortlessly.
Base 1 was the first number system and we used different number systems even Base 60 was used by Babylonians circa 2000BC. At the end Base 10 accepted an became widespread. Maybe it is because we have 10 fingers, who knows.
There is a highly informative video i have found and like to share:
Let’s take a look at some number systems
Number systems in Base 1 through 10 are comprehensible. Things might get a little confusing with Base 11 and further. Because we are highly accustomed to decimal number system. Let’s take Base 11; where 10 is a numeral which is represented by letter “a”. In base 10, a digit can be one of ten numerals(0,1,2,…,9). In base 11, addition to decimal numbers' numerals, a digit can be 10 which instead we use “a”. In base 16 there are 16 numerals and those are: 0,1,2,…,9,a,b,c,d,e,f. a=10, b=11,… ,f=15.
Computers use binary number system, because it is more cost and computationally efficient. We use hexadecimal while using computers because it is easier for us to read and operate.
And the journey to the Bitcoin, world’s most secure store of value and best money, has started out of necessity of counting… well, more sheep. :)
Thank you for reading. I hope, you enjoyed it and/or it helped you somehow.
Have a nice day :)
