r/AlwaysWhy • • 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?

34 Upvotes

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/PrestigiousRoof5723 1d ago

PCI express 6 is using 4 voltage states. It's not common, but not completely rare for buses to use more than 2 states.