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The stepped reckoner or Leibniz calculator was a ... which can hold 16 decimal ... in a procedure equivalent to the familiar long multiplication and long ...
Some chips implement long multiplication, in hardware or in microcode, for various integer and floating-point word sizes. In arbitrary-precision arithmetic, it is common to use long multiplication with the base set to 2 w, where w is the number of bits in a word, for multiplying
A binary computer does exactly the same multiplication as decimal numbers do, but with binary numbers. In binary encoding each long number is multiplied by one digit (either 0 or 1), and that is much easier than in decimal, as the product by 0 or 1 is just 0 or the same number.
The second most important decision is in the choice of the base of arithmetic, here ten. There are many considerations. The scratchpad variable d must be able to hold the result of a single-digit multiply plus the carry from the prior digit's multiply. In base ten, a sixteen-bit integer is certainly adequate as it allows up to 32767.
The arithmometer (French: arithmomètre) was the first digital mechanical calculator strong and reliable enough to be used daily in an office environment. This calculator could add and subtract two numbers directly and perform long multiplications and divisions effectively by using a movable accumulator for the result.
The user may estimate the location of the decimal point in the result by mentally interpolating between labeled graduations. Scientific notation is used to track the decimal point for more precise calculations. Addition and subtraction steps in a calculation are generally done mentally or on paper, not on the slide rule.
The decimal representation of an ... like addition with carry and long multiplication can be applied to ... was the first calculator that could perform ...
The lattice technique can also be used to multiply decimal fractions. For example, to multiply 5.8 by 2.13, the process is the same as to multiply 58 by 213 as described in the preceding section. To find the position of the decimal point in the final answer, one can draw a vertical line from the decimal point in 5.8, and a horizontal line from ...