) gurgled happily, sounding much like they
were saying :

Binary Coded Decimal is used a lot
with the programme machines and the various remote control of the IMRs
etc. and describers.

In BCD the decimal number is represented by the digits 0 and 1. The
number 4 is represented by 100, 5-101, 6-110, 7-111, 8-1000, 16-10000

Umm, not quite.

In normal Binary, 16 is 10000, but in BCD each decimal digit is coded
separately in four-bit Binary, so 16 would be 0001 0110 - which is why it's
called Binary Coded Decimal.

Note - I have no idea about whether BCD or normal Binary was used...