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
Thumb tip as an actor. Magicians have used modified thumb tips to accomplish different effects. A thumb tip with a slit in the tip can be used like a dye tube to apparently change the color of a silk . In this case, a colored silk is preloaded into the tip. The magician steals the tip into the left fist, then pokes a white silk into the tip while alternately pulling the colored silk out from the other end. A thumb tip with a small suction cup attached to the tip can be used to create the illusion of floating small objects