Decimal the Roman numerals did, an intermediate base of 5. Notably, the polymath Archimedes (ca. 287–212 BC) invented a decimal positional system in his Sand Reckoner which was based on 10 and later led the German mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss to lament what heights science would have already reached in his days if Archimedes had fully realized the potential of his ingenious discovery. The Hittites hieroglyphs (since 15th century BC), just like the Egyptian and early numerals in Greece, was strictly decimal. Some non-mathematical ancient texts like the Vedas dating back to 1900–1700 BCE make use of decimals and mathematical decimal
Binary-coded decimal a slightly less dense storage. BCD was used in many early decimal computers, and is implemented in the instruction set of machines such as the IBM System/360 series and its descendants, Digital Equipment Corporation's VAX and the Motorola 68000-series processors. Although BCD "per se" is not as widely used as in the past and is no longer implemented in newer computers' instruction sets (such as ARM; x86 does not support its BCD instructions in long mode any more), decimal fixed-point and floating-point formats are still important and continue to be used in financial, commercial, and industrial computing, where subtle conversion