Complement

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Complement

1. An angle equal to 90 minus a given angle.
Thus, 50 is the complement of 40, and the two are said to be complementary. See explement.
2. The true complement of any quantity in positional notation, i.e., the quantity which, when added to the first quantity, gives the least quantity containing one more place.
3. The base-minus-one complement of any quantity in positional notation; i.e., the quantity which, when added to the first quantity, gives the largest quantity containing the same number of places.
In many computing machines a negative quantity is represented as a complement of the corresponding positive quantity.

References

This article is based on NASA's Dictionary of Technical Terms for Aerospace Use