Incas Used Early Computers and Decimal System

The Quipu, an Pre-Inca Data Structure

Quipu: A Modern Mystery

The Stanford Quipu

The Quipucamayu

Data Structure

The quipu is a kind of data structure which is not a computer data structure. A computer data structure is based, not on knots & strings; but upon on/off states. We write these states 0 (‘off”) and 1 (‘on’).

The ‘working memory’ of the computer is a massive collection of on/off states. Single states are known as ‘bits’. Eight bits is a byte. There are 256 possible values for a byte. Typically these are numbered 0 .. 255.

The way we manage these states is by computer instruction sets, also known as programming. The program written down is called ‘code’. An example is the pseudocode snippet from the article, “Syntax.”