While most of the modern inventions are credited to the
western world, the earliest known use of binary system is in the works of the
Indian scholar pin-gala. Although it’s easiest for us humans to count in multiples of tens, electronic
machines find using the binary system
easier. It’s easy because the electric/electronic medium uses the flow of
electricity to indicate the ‘on/off’ state. Assuming the flow of electricity to
be 1 and the lack of same to be 0, the electronic machines could be taught how
to count using these two digits.
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| Batteries |
The roots of the binary system can be traced way to the
‘Boolean’ algebra-created by George Boole(whose name you’ll come across as a
data-type in most programming languages ) in 1854. The next major advance was a
master’s thesis submitted at MIT in 1937 by Claude Shannon who has been called
the father of the information theory. Interestingly , his paper which concluded
that an electrical system based on Boolean algebra would be able to construct
and resolve any logical or numerical relationship is said to be one of the most
important master theses of all time. Given the fact that everything electronic
you can conceive of today works on the binary system, do we even have to try to
convince you why the binary system is one of the greatest inventions of all
time? We guess not.
