Computers work by having ones and zeros represented by memory locations that either contain magnetism or no magnetism. These memory locations are combined to represent bigger numbers using binary arithmetic. For example 0010 is 2, 0111 is 7, and 1000 is 8. Is there any way of altering and determing the polarity of the magnetism? If there were, then "north-up" could be a 2, "north-down" could be a 1, and no magnetism would be a 0.
That way, the computer could work in base three. A 2 would be 0002, a 7 would be 0021, and an eight 0022. It took two digits to represent an 8 instead of four (not counting the leading zeros.)
In binary, the biggest 4 digit number is 1111, which is 15. So sixteen numbers (0 to 15) can be represented with 4 digits. In base three, however, the biggest 4 digit number would be 2222, which represents 80. Many more numbers (i.e. data) could be packed into the same memory space.
Is anybody working on base three computers?
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