Are dive computers making bad divers?

[wetb4igetinthewater]

Powers of two and hence: 8-bit bytes, are actually fairly recent. Apparently they ended up making hardware design easier and won the market.

The Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was 4-bit and released in 1971. That's 51 years ago..... That's old! (as I was born that year, and I am old).

 

[dmaziuk]

The Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was 4-bit and released in 1971. That's 51 years ago..... That's old! (as I was born that year, and I am old).

4 bits are good, you can store 0..9 in that, and run Binary-Coded Decimal. I hear beancounters still do. Of course they pack 2 digits in an 8-bit byte these days.

 

[Akimbo]

Computers aside, I never understood why the ancients settled on base 10 instead of base 8, just to make dividing things up easier. Oh well, at least we aren't stuck with Roman numerals.

 

[boulderjohn]

Computers aside, I never understood why the ancients settled on base 10 instead of base 8, just to make dividing things up easier. Oh well, at least we aren't stuck with Roman numerals.

It depends upon what ancients you are talking about. The Vikings had a base 12 system, and their culture dominated northern Europe for hundreds of years, especially northern France (Normandy) and England. That's why we have so many 12s in our life today.

 

[Akimbo]

The Intel 4004, the first microprocessor, was 4-bit and released in 1971. That's 51 years ago.....

At least that was state of the art at the time. I was stuck in US Navy First Class Diving school training in one of these wonders of technology, which was only slightly improved from the 1830s model:

The Vikings had a base 12 system, and their culture dominated northern Europe for hundreds of years

Base 12 has the same problem with dividing things in half as base 10. It is easy to to cut a linear measure in half or weigh two equal weights on an improvised balance scale. Besides, people could use fingers even if they didn't know the names of the numbers or speak the same language. Not as easy with base 12.

 

[Esprise Me]

Computers aside, I never understood why the ancients settled on base 10 instead of base 8, just to make dividing things up easier. Oh well, at least we aren't stuck with Roman numerals.

If only we had evolved with four fingers on each hand, like Simpsons characters.

 

[BRT]

Wreck or diving from a boat?

Wreck, boat or shore. I don't believe I have ever done a square profile dive.

 

[Akimbo]

If only we had evolved with four fingers on each hand

We did, four fingers and a thumb.

 

[Wibble]

Wreck, boat or shore. I don't believe I have ever done a square profile dive.

Then what’s your definition of a square profile?

 

[Belzelbub]

Then what’s your definition of a square profile?

This is the closest I've done to a square profile. And even then it has a few dips and peaks that aren't exactly square.

A bit of background. This was a cleaning dive done at an aquarium. The task was to brush and vacuum some red algae at the bottom of the habitat. Explanation of the dive below.

Initial descent to 17' to remove the grate covering the vacuum hookup, then dropped down to 23' to hookup the vacuum hose.
Ascend to surface to let the topside crew know that the vacuum hose was hooked up so they could radio over to maintenance to turn on the vacuum.
Majority of time spent at 17' was brushing and vacuuming the algae on the bottom.
Second ascent was to tell the surface crew to turn off the vacuum as we were done.
Descend back down to prepare to unhook the hose when the vacuum was turned off. That was taking a long time so I headed to the surface (3rd ascent) with the hose as my air was getting low.
When I could feel the vacuum off, I descended again to unhook the hose, replace the cap on the inlet, and replace the grate covering the plumbing. Then I ascended and ended the dive.

Despite this being squareish, if I were to have logged this using a table, I would have needed to use 23' for the entire dive even though the vast majority was spent at 17'.