Binary
Counting with zeros and ones
Humans are used to working in a base ten number system. We have ten fingers and we have created ten symbols to represent how many fingers we are holding up. 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 to count any higher we have to set a place holder and continue with the process, (just like counting with our hands). We add a digit to the left and we have 10,11,12...etc.
Binary is no different and it suits a computer because a computer uses bits which we can think of as switches or lightbulbs. A basic switch or lightbulb can be either "on" or "off". We represent these two states as 0 and 1, 0 is "off" 1 is "on". Just like counting with our hands when we run out of things to count with we add a digit to the left.
In decimal (base ten) after we run out of symbols we have 10
I binary after we run out of symbols we have 10, only 10 in binary actually equals "2" in decimal.
In binary we would count like this 0,1,10,11,100,101,110,111,1000...etc
With only 0 and 1 each new place holder is worth twice as much as the previous one.
- 1 = 1 decimal
- 10 = 2 decimal
- 100 = 4 decimal
- 1000 = 8 decimal
- 10000 = 16 decimal
- 100000 = 32 decimal
- 1000000 = 64 decimal
- 10000000 = 128 decimal
Eight bits make up a byte and is a common computer unit.
See a more complete "technical" description on Wikipedia
