This summer the children’s programme in the Arithmeum will deal with topics connected with the main exhibition „Aesthetics of Chip Design„. The individual themes will be „What are microprocessors?„, „What is chip design all about?„, and „How does a computer work?„. Although these topics depend to some extent on one another, they can be booked individually. For children aged 8 or above, prior registration necessary, fee EUR 6.

The first reckoning aid used by man were, of course, the fingers. Only much later, digits were used to represent numbers. How were numbers represented mechanically? We will consider these and other questions by looking at a historical mechanical calculating machine. How does a computer use electricity to count? With which digits does a computer work? These questions lead us to consider other number systems than our usual decimal one. There were times in the past when number systems based on 20 or even 60 were used. We will learn to do arithmetic in different number systems and will get to know the binary system which has just the two digits 0 and 1 and which is the number system used by computers.