Re: OK, that's it.....
Georgia Tech originally had a Burroughs 5000 machine for its computer department. Since the algal compiler for the Burroughs machines were written in alcohol, the standard senior project was to extend the compiler to give us something we called GTL (Georgia Tech language). It was a while before someone got around to actually trying to optimize all of these extensions.
It's funny you should mention an abacus. Before we had good calculators, I used a Chinese abacus (two beads in the upper section and five beads in the lower section of each column) which could represent hexadecimal numbers.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
