On 09/21/2014 08:30 AM, Shmuel Metz (Seymour J.) wrote: > In <[email protected]>, on > 09/20/2014 > at 03:05 AM, Paul Gilmartin > <[email protected]> said: > >> The Soviets experimented with ternary computers: > So did IBM. > IBM may have experimented with ternary computers, but they never committed one to production.
The Soviets went considerably beyond the level of experimentation and produced at least 50 production "Setun" ternary machines between 1958 and 1965. An enhanced Setun-70 ternary machine was designed and built in 1970, but it appears only the prototype was built with no subsequent production run. The Setun was cheaper to build and run (fewer components) than binary computers of comparable power and also highly reliable, but the advent of large-scale integrated circuits for binary logic eventually changed the economic equation in favor of binary machines. That, and Soviet bureaucratic resistance to this unusual, not-centrally-planned creation of Moscow University, appeared to have limited Setun production and eventually killed further ternary development. -- Joel C. Ewing, Bentonville, AR [email protected] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
