16 (number) old days, weighing was done with a beam balance to make equal splits. It would be easier to split a heap of grains into sixteen equal parts through successive divisions than to split into ten parts. Chinese Taoists did finger computation on the trigrams and hexagrams by counting the finger tips and joints of the fingers with the tip of the thumb. Each hand can count up to 16 in such manner. The Chinese abacus uses two upper beads to represent the 5s and 5 lower beads to represent the 1s, the 7 beads can represent a hexadecimal digit from
Touch typing must have been using similar systems. In 1889 Bates Torrey coined the words "writing by touch" in his article. In 1890 Lovisa Ellen Bullard Barnes defined the words "write by touch" in her book as follows: Touch typing is contrasted to "search and peck", also known as "hunt-and-peck" or "two-fingered typing". Instead of relying on the memorized position of keys, the typist finds each key by sight and moves their finger over to press it, usually the index finger of their dominant hand. This method is considered inferior as not only is it slower than touch typing, the typist would