was examining an open hard disk and thought about the 2d nature of the ferrous material. Pointing one direction indicates a "1", another direction a "0".
I thought, "Could it be 3d"? Then, the next morning, I thought "That would be too difficult, but what if we used a third direction anyway? How many directions can we go, anyway?"
A week later, I was washing the dishes and thought, "How in the heck would a binary computer handle a three direction - or more - data pattern?" Then I cut myself on a steak knife and remembered that energy can flow in either direction through the kind of transistors used in CPUs. And BINGO!!! "+", "-", "null"! A trinary system!
Over the next few months, I tried to flesh it out and increase the number of states - the latter only worked with magnetic media. The transistors simply became circuits when I tried to add states. I'm looking forward to experimenting with the concept. |
