Decimals, etc.

Gene: Yes, I did turn him down, mostly because back then I did my programming in FORTRAN on a large batch-processing mainframe at UCSD and I would have had to write my own decimal to dozenal conversion routines. Computer time was scarce and expensive (several hundred dollars an hour), but I used to get a few free minutes at the end of every quarter when people who had unused time on their grants donated it to students lest it be subtracted from their next allotment. Most of the time I compiled large tuning tables of ETs and extended high-prime JI for Erv Wilson. He discovered the Hexany and Eikosany when he was trying to decide what pitch bases I should use for the JI tables.

Now with Mathematica, compiling tables using non-decimal bases is trivial.

--John

--- In tuning@yahoogroups.com, "John H. Chalmers" <JHCHALMERS@...> wrote:

> Computer time was scarce and expensive (several hundred dollars an
> hour), but I used to get a few free minutes at the end of every quarter
> when people who had unused time on their grants donated it to students
> lest it be subtracted from their next allotment.

Ah. Now I got a few seconds of mainframe time in the 60s because my younger brother was a CS major (a brand new idea at the time) and had lots of fun with the printout. Later I was fond of tormenting programmable calculators. Those were the days!

Most of the time I
> compiled large tuning tables of ETs and extended high-prime JI for Erv
> Wilson. He discovered the Hexany and Eikosany when he was trying to
> decide what pitch bases I should use for the JI tables.

Interesting! And not what I would have supposed.