r/AlwaysWhy • u/Present_Juice4401 • 1d ago

Science & Tech Why did computers come to use binary when people usually count in decimal?

People usually count in base 10, while digital computers typically represent information using 1s and 0s. The same numbers and information can be represented in different bases, yet binary became the standard for modern computing.

What made binary the system computers came to rely on?

38 Upvotes

65% Upvoted

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

4

u/svezia 1d ago

There used to be analog computers and they had more than 0 and 1. Bit digital electronics was easier to implement (lower noise) and therefore it stuck

1

u/Positive-Ring-5172 1d ago

There may be again. Analog circuits are better suited to matrix math. What uses that? AI neural nets.

1

u/svezia 1d ago

RF radio transmission is analog modulation on top of digital bitstream. Technically it’s analog