[alan-crowe]

The question of whether hardware components are easier to build and more reliable with two states instead of ten is more subtle than it appears. In the early days the appropriate princples for building hardware were in flux requiring co-desigh of software (number base) and hardward. I'm particularly remembering the decatron: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekatron. The comparison is between doing binary with triodes and doing decimal with triodes, dekatrons and anything else you might invent. Is binary really better or have you merely failed to invent a suitable tube?