Digital means "with digits". I play the guitar digitally; that is, with my digits (fingers). With another meaning of digital, the time is not displayed on a clock face but rather by showing digits to represent time.
Oh right, I forgot about that definition of digital. Now I'm wondering about the etymology. How did it go from fingers to numbers to binary electronics?
Well you our decimal numbering system is based on our digits, so that's why digit is another word for number. Computers only work on numbers, even more, integer numbers, the kind you can count with your digits. Most computers work with binary numbers, but that isn't a rule, in fact some older computers worked in other systems than binary. So calling them digital was more appropriate than binary.
I don't think many people call computers 'binary electronics', the usual term electrical engineers use would be discrete circuits. Note that that does not rule out other counting systems either.
>Digital data, in information theory and information systems, are discrete, discontinuous representations of information or works, as contrasted with continuous, or analog signals which behave in a continuous manner, or represent information using a continuous function.
Binary electronics are unfortunately very analog. H and L are just abstractions and simplifications. This is just more "up front" about it.
This is also a fun display of sig figs. You can build a sundial that tries to display to single minutes, but that doesn't mean it'll be accurate unless you have a rather elaborate microcontroller almost continually adjusting the angles from day to day, not to mention daylight savings time. I think if you'd have to adjust the mounting angle thru the day would depend on latitude and month of year.
On the equinox, a quarter of an angular degree is a minute of chronological time. This varies a bit thru the year, and depends on your lattitude too. Ask your local celestial navigation guy. I have just enough experience with celestial navigation and sailboats to know I shouldn't be doing it, or at least I'd have to be super careful if I tried it for real.
