“It turns out that ternary is the most economical of all possible integer bases for representing big numbers.”
Write 100,000 in base 10 and the radix economy is 60. Binary scores 34. Ternary scores 33. That one-point win over binary is the whole efficiency case. The Soviets built dozens of ternary Setun machines, and binary still took over because switching circuits were easier to build. Convention beat math, and it will keep winning.