The simplest way of representing numbers is via a unary system. Here the length of the representation of a number is equal to the size of the number itself, i.e., the number “ten” is represented as “\\\\\\\\\\”. The classical Roman number system is an improvement since it contains different symbols for different orders of magnitude (one = I, ten = X, hundred = C, thousand = M). This system has enormous drawbacks since in principle one needs an infinite amount of symbols to code the natural numbe