BINARY COMPUTATION, used by our DIGITAL COMPUTERS, is actually ancient -- mentioned in The Bible. For members of the Tribes of Israel learned it in Egypt, during their "captivity".

The term "mediation" means "to come between"; in computation, "to halve a number". And "duplatiion" means, of course, "to double".

The ALGORITHM OF MEDIATION AND DUPLATION was used to MULTIPLY TWO NUMBERS -- difficult to do with Greek numerals or Roman numerals.Given, say, d x m:

1. We duplate on d (doouble d) while mediating on m (halving m), until the mediation process reaches 1 ("the bottom").
2. Note: In mediating (halving an odd number), such as k, we mediate on (halve) k - 1, an even number: (k - 1)/2 is the mediate in such a case.
3. Going back to the results, we UNDERLINE THE ODD MEDIATES.
4. We ADD THE DUPLATES ASOCIATED WITH ODD MEDIATES.
5. This SUM is THE PRODUCT OF d x m.

Let's start with 85 x 26, writing the product in this way because it shortens the process to MEDIATE ON THE SMALLER ONE (if one be smaller). The process looks like this, UNDERLING DUPLATES ASSOCIATED WITH ODD MEDIATES:
85, 26 -> 170, 13 -> 340, 6 -> 680, 3 -> 1360, 1. FINISHED.

Adding the UNDERLINED DUPLATES, we find: 170 + 680 + 1360 = 2110. Then 85 x 26 = 2110. (Check the standrad way.)

See how ancient BINARY COMPUTING is! Unfortunately, National Science Foundation flacks and teachers didn't tell students and parents this, in pushing BINARY NUMERALS under "The New Math" Program.