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
Hand strength pinch strength are functionally relevant to measure the combined action of a large number of intrinsic and extrinsic hand muscles as well as the combined action of a number of different joints. By comparing outcome with normative data, the amount of muscle strength loss can be determined. For more specific dynamometry of the intrinsic muscles, intrinsic hand dynamometers have been developed. The advantage of these dynamometers is that they to do not measure a large number of muscles in combined action, but can measure single actions such as thumb opposition of index finger abduction. One such dynamometer is the Rotterdam