History Of Hex

Can anyone tell me the history of HEX, plz?

Hex, short for "hexadecimal base counting", was invented in France in the year 770 AD. In that time Mervin, a famous wizard, became a counselor to King Charlemagne because he had 8 fingers on each hand.

Mervin could count faster than the other counselors and treasurers, because within a base he could go farther, using more symbols in fewer positions. When other mathematicians in the king's court had risen to 100, Mervin would only be at 0x64. This meant Mervin could express larger numbers in a smaller space.

But there was a more fundamental advantage. When King Charlemagne would divide his country into fiefdoms for taxation purposes, his treasurers would divide the country into 2 duchies, each of which were divided into 2 earldoms, each of which were divided into 2 counties, each of which divided into 2 estates, each of which contained 2 hamlets.

This means the entire country consisted of 32 hamlets and 16 estates. But, to Mervin, there were 0x20 hamlets, and 0x10 estates. Put another way, because Mervin's total finger count was a power of a power of two, he could more easily divide and multiply. To divide by 16 he shifts right one base counting amount, and to divide by a power of two < than 16 he manipulates only one column without affecting the others.

Mervin takes his place with CharlesBabbage and the Jaquard guy who invented the mechanically programmed loom as one of the founders of the theories that lead to modern programming.

-- PhlIp

Ok...at risk of sounding very naive, I'm going to have to ask if this is a joke! -- DamyanPepper

"naive" isn't the word. Which part of it sounded plausible to you, and why? Are you going into (cultural) shock from being surrounded by Australian humor for so long? You've lost your humor compass and can no longer distinguish the real from the surreal? Can I borrow some money? :-) -- Doug

• Originally I neglected to add a smiley face, yet if there ever was a time when an emoticon was required to indicate humor, this surely is it! :-) But contrast with "Showing emotions in text without emoticons", http://www.remarque.org/~doug/emotions.html

Ah...I've been at zero-wit for a while now :) I'm not going to defend thinking it was highly plausible, but it is the sort of thing that's crazy enough to be true! Can I claim that the description of the board game below threw me a bit too? What's the real history of hex though? Did people start using it only when they started using computers or is there an older history to it? Some things - quaternions for example - were looked into years before anyone found a practical use for them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexadecimal has some interesting info on this - it was news to me that there hex was in use but with different notation schemes until we settled on the one in common use today. -- DamyanPepper

• Actually, I'm sure you have stories about Oz vs. Brit wit, that would be interesting to share
• The Hex board game referenced on WikiPedia below is quite, quite serious.
• It's true that there's nothing special about base 10. Base 60 was used by several highly-advanced early civilizations, and is directly the reason that we measure degrees to base 60 squared and hours are 60 squared seconds.
• The use of base 16 in particular, pre-computer-age, is also an interesting subject, and I've seen it pop up in various unexpected places in various math histories, but nothing is coming to mind right off. It may have been the base used by the mathematicians who influenced Napier in creating his base-10 Napierian logarithms, but that's only a vague memory.
• There's been a lot written on such things, but I haven't focused on base 16 in particular, so my memory is spotty.

-- DougMerritt

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Hex is a board game played on a hexagonal grid:

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_%28board_game%29

Also, see the book "Hex Strategy: Making the Right Connections", by Cameron Browne, ISBN 1-56881-117-9 -- EricJablow.

Hex is what HarryPotter does to Draco Malfoy when the teachers aren't looking. (Behind the bike sheds?) [Spelled with an H, not an S!]

It's also the code for the Helsinki Stock Exchange. -- JonathanTang