I was once told that there are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don’t. If you are wondering what the other 8 types are, you fall into the latter category. Only for now though. By the time we reach the end of this article, you would be able to understand binary, meaning you’ll switch categories.
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, a German philosopher, polymath and mathematician, is seen as the man who laid the foundation for the modern binary number system. We say “modern” because the system of using two alternate states, components, conditions or conclusions existed in various forms throughout history.
Along with Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, Leibniz is considered to be among the greatest rationalists of the 17th century. Leibniz believed that logic, or the “laws of thought” could be moved into an absolute mathematical state from a verbal condition. As an idea that was ahead of the times, the scientific community ignored it and Leibniz had to drop his proposition.
The Chinese “Book of Changes” or “I Ching” came his way ten years later, and in this book Leibniz found confirmation for his theories. The I Ching, which is one of the oldest Chinese classic texts, depicts the universe as a progression of contradicting dualities, a series of on-off, yes-no possibilities. If life itself could be reduced to such conditions, Leibniz reasoned that logic and thought too should follow a similar pattern.
Instead of the decimal system (base 10), which uses combination of numbers from 0 through 9, the binary system (base 2) uses just two unique numbers, 0 and 1. So decimal numbers would be represented in the binary number system as follows: 0 would be 0, 1 would be 1, 2 would be 10 (1*2^1 + 0*2^0), 3 would be 11 (1*2^1 + 1*2^0), 4 would be 100 (1*2^2 + 0*2^1 + 0*2^0) and so on.
Leibniz set out to refine his system, transposing decimal numbers into infinite rows of 0s and 1s, but died without achieving his dream of a universal language. The fundamental idea of a binary yes-no or on-off principle, however, stayed. George Boole, who picked up the combined efforts of others who followed, mixed his Boolean logic with binary language to produce the combinations that now allow computers to operate.
Almost every electronic device is designed to operate internally with all the information encoded in binary numbers. Transistors and capacitors, which are the basic components of memory and processors, generally have only two distinct states: off and on. Using these it is therefore relatively simple to construct circuits that generate two distinct voltage levels, representing 0 and 1.
The term bit, which is a portmanteau for binary digit, was coined by mathematician John W. Tukey and was first used in Claude E. Shannon’s influential publication A Mathematical Theory of Communication . This bit, which can hold the value of either 0 or 1, has become the most basic unit in communication systems and digital computing.
Now, read the first sentence of this article once more, and think binary. Do you get it?
'An Eye for an I' is 100 columns old! If you are curious about inventions, email ganesh.a.s@thehindu.co.in. Don't forget to answer the question in the box!
