History
In 1971, Tien Chi Chen and Dr. Irving T. Ho devised a lossless prefix code (now known as Chen–Ho encoding) which packed three decimal digits into 10 binary bits using a scheme which allowed compression from or expansion to BCD with only two or three gate delays in hardware. Densely packed decimal is a refinement of this, by Mike Cowlishaw, which was incorporated into the IEEE 754-2008 standard for decimal floating-point.
Read more about this topic: Densely Packed Decimal
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Literary works cannot be taken over like factories, or literary forms of expression like industrial methods. Realist writing, of which history offers many widely varying examples, is likewise conditioned by the question of how, when and for what class it is made use of.”
—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“As I am, so shall I associate, and so shall I act; Caesar’s history will paint out Caesar.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)