Timeline for Why Do Computers Use the Binary Number System (0,1)?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jul 8 at 22:41 | history | edited | D.W.♦ |
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| May 23 at 23:18 | review | Suggested edits | |||
| Jul 8 at 22:41 | |||||
| Mar 13, 2017 at 10:46 | history | protected | Yuval Filmus | ||
| May 8, 2016 at 21:00 | comment | added | Johan | There are indeed a great many places in computing where more than 2 states are used: Harddisks, SSD, networking, (A)DSL..... | |
| May 8, 2016 at 14:28 | comment | added | vzn | a lot of this has to do with shannon who was the 1st to show the advantages of boolean logic for general computation and its natural connection with electronics. one might say its a widespread engineering convention with lots of good/ natural design reasons behind it. might try to work this into answer sometime. however in general consider the problem of noise in electrical circuits and how well binary circuits can suppress/ reject it. | |
| Nov 19, 2015 at 18:20 | answer | added | peeldog | timeline score: 5 | |
| Jun 8, 2015 at 22:38 | comment | added | Bob Brown | I'm going to put this as a comment because there's already an accepted answer. It is extraordinarily difficult to build electronic devices that reliably discriminate among ten values because of manufacturing tolerances. It is relatively easy to build electronic devices that discriminate between two values. So, the short answer is that computers use binary representation for reliability. I've written a more detailed answer for those who may care: bbrown.kennesaw.edu/papers/why_binary.html | |
| Feb 6, 2015 at 19:19 | comment | added | Linuxios | In 1958, the Soviets built a ternary computer: Setun | |
| Oct 23, 2014 at 10:17 | answer | added | Irfan Khan | timeline score: -3 | |
| Sep 10, 2014 at 19:29 | comment | added | Mooing Duck | @Raphael: Ternary did | |
| Aug 9, 2014 at 3:01 | review | Community Evaluations | |||
| Aug 17, 2014 at 3:01 | |||||
| Jun 19, 2014 at 18:33 | answer | added | supercat | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jun 16, 2014 at 10:05 | vote | accept | Rai Ammad Khan | ||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 21:40 | comment | added | Raphael | Larger bases did not turn out to be useful overall. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 21:30 | comment | added | D.W.♦ | What research have you done? When I type the title of your question into Google, I get back search results that provide several answers to your question. Also, the Wikipedia article on binary numbers and binary code has a short explanation. We expect you to do a significant amount of research before asking here, and it looks to me like you haven't done even basic research before asking. Searching Google and Wikipedia is a bare minimum. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 20:17 | answer | added | Patrick87 | timeline score: 22 | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 19:31 | answer | added | Joey Eremondi | timeline score: 32 | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 13:25 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/#!/StackCompSci/status/477441514176389120 | ||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 12:19 | answer | added | Gary D. | timeline score: 9 | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 6:28 | vote | accept | Rai Ammad Khan | ||
| Jun 16, 2014 at 10:04 | |||||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 6:16 | comment | added | Yuval Filmus | This is a question about electrical engineering. Apparently binary gates are easier to implement. IIRC some ternary-based computer had been built at some point. | |
| Jun 13, 2014 at 5:39 | history | edited | David Richerby |
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| Jun 13, 2014 at 5:37 | review | First posts | |||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 5:40 | |||||
| Jun 13, 2014 at 5:19 | history | asked | Rai Ammad Khan | CC BY-SA 3.0 |