Scientific pitch is an absolute pitch standard that sets middle C (or C4) to 256 Hz. It was introduced in the early 20th century. A4 on this scale is approximately 431 Hz, noticeably different from the current concert pitch standard of 440 Hz. It is no longer used by concert orchestras but is still sometimes favoured in scientific writings for the convenience of all the octaves of C being an exact round number in the binary system. For example, this frequency for middle C, 256 Hz, can be represented by (100000000)two. More usefully, the octaves of C remain a whole number all the way down to 1 Hz (in either counting system).
Read more about this topic: Scientific Pitch Notation
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