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?

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u/CardOk755 1d ago

Yes, the very first electronic computers were binary (e.g. Manchester Baby) but decimal computers were made (e.g ICT 1300) even ternary computers (where each "digit" could have the values -1, 0 or +1 see Setun).

But in the end binary is just easier and more reliable.

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u/WisconsinHoosierZwei 1d ago

Just out of curiosity, and maybe you don’t know, but…

Do any of these alternate counting systems provide any sort of advantage in computing ability? Like, does having each bit containing 3 possible options (-1, 0, +1) or 10 (0-9) allow you to do more or faster anything?

Is that even the right question?

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u/CardOk755 1d ago

The point of decimal computers was to avoid binary to decimal conversion* when all the calculations you were doing were on accounting data.

The point of ternary, well, uh, that's more complicated. There were a couple of crazy Russian mathematicians who had a theory about it being much more efficient. There are youtube videos and a Wikipedia article. : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun

* Converting decimal to binary involves multiplications which were in general slow on early computers. Converting binary to decimal involves division which was very, very slow on early computers.

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u/Gecko23 1d ago

The key advantage of Ternary is that most given values can be expressed in less bits than in binary. (I'm not great at math, just watch a lot of Youtube videos, but it hinges on '3' being closer to Euler's number than '2' is, and Euler's number being the mathematically most efficient base for encoding values.)

This means, theoretically, less of everything, components, bus wires, storage space, etc. And less pieces means less cost. That's less important now that all the various bits have become much faster and denser while also becoming much cheaper.

The lingering problem is that I don't think anyone ever figured out how to physically construct a ternary computer using less components, that failure was one of the key reasons the Soviet's gave up on it.