Is 2 the lowest possible numeric base ?
No. There’s a lot more in the matter of bases than most people can dream. Although one usually only encounters number systems with positive integer bases (binary, decimal, hexadecimal, octal), it is also possible to use non-integral, negative, irrational, or even complex bases. For a comprehensive discussion, see Knuth’s ‘Art of Computer Programming’. Although it is not a positional system, one sometimes talks about a system with base one (the unary system) where the integer N is represented as a string of N ones. This number system is especially popular among theoretical computer scientists when discussing Turing machines. The discussion about bases seems to surface in a.f.c about once every semester, and it seems to hold endless fascination for CS students.
