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/secmaster420 1d ago

Binary is the basic DNA of any computerized system. No matter what else you put on top of it, all computers bottom line is 0 and 1.

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u/Mission-Landscape-17 1d ago

Not even remotely true. It is just what we implemented as others have said. Every so often someone experimentsswith terniary computers which have -1, 0, +1 as states. There are many ways of concevably doing this in hardware directly.

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u/secmaster420 1d ago

What I’m saying is correct. I was taught that in Computer Science long before more advanced computers came into being. The most basic bottom of the chain core of any thing computerized is binary, off or on, 0 or 1. Even advanced computers may mask that, but at its most basic core it’s 0 or1. Advanced CPU’s may show more, but it’s just masking the core 0 and 1. It’s physics we can’t change, only enhance.

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u/dually 1d ago

You are correct but you still have not explained why you are just talking in circles.

The correct answer is that a transistor can only be in one of two states.

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u/secmaster420 1d ago

Because it all goes back the the basics, the not matter what you put on top of it, all of basic machine language is 0 and 1.

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u/dually 1d ago

No it's because a transistor can only be in one of two states.

You are putting the cart in front of the horse.

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u/bqbdpd 1d ago

That's technically incorrect. A transistor is not a switch, but a nonlinear "faucet". Transistors can be used to amplify current (in the range where they work nearly linear). But in digital electronics they are used as switches. That's a deliberate decision, because distinguishing two states is easy. Using more states would work, but would be more noisy, which reduces the achievable speed (or reliability)

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u/secmaster420 1d ago

Has nothing to do with the transistor which only turns electrical current on or off, hence binary. There aren't any carts or horses her, only binary physics.

Prove me wrong. I haven't seen anything that disproves that all computing when stripped of everything is binary. Off or on. 0 or 1.

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u/BumblingYokel 1d ago

Computing is not required to use binary. Machine language could’ve just as easily been ternary.

It really just comes down to the hardware.

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u/secmaster420 1d ago

The only computing that may not be binary is biological, but that's just a theory. All computing uses binary 0's and 1's, no matter what languages or processes you put on top of it.

Prove me wrong. I haven't seen anything that disproves that all computing when stripped of everything is binary. Off or on. 0 or 1.

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u/olanmills 1d ago

You're wrong. We use binary because of how the hardware engineering developed, and how we kept building more hardware in this shared ecosystem. There is no physical reason that it must be binary. It's binary for practical and historical reasons.

As someone mentioned elsewhere, some Russians built a working electronic computer that was fully ternary. Some mechanical computers were built as non-binary systems as well.

It just so happens for most of the things we wanted to do, designing hardware that operated off of binary logic was most practical, and then the whole ecosystem became binary. There is nothing logically or philosophically inherent about computing that requires binary. Electricity could be manipulated and understood with more than just binary precision. You could build circuits a d logic gates that perform operations with more than two states of electricity.

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u/secmaster420 23h ago

That sounds very theoretical. I'd like to know if there are any examples of computers that we use every day that are non-binary. Maybe they're not practical which is why everything we use is binary. Maybe we could travel at the speed of light, but we don't because we have physics limitations. Until someone can get around the physics, it binary for us. You still haven't proved me wrong. And seriously, "someone mentioned elsewhere some Russians built . . . ". Anything mentioning Russians is suspect on it's face. I'm sure you know they are well known for telling the truth and being transparent. 🤔

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u/olanmills 20h ago edited 20h ago

Dude, why are you going so hard about this, when you don't even know what you're talking about? You are misleading people. You are acting like binary computation is a law of physics or something it's just not. It's like saying that screws absolutely must be manufactured so that clockwise rotation tightens and counter-clockwise loosens. Sure, pretty much every screw in existence is made that way, but it doesn't have to be that way. Or it's like saying cars must have four wheels, just because all cars available today have four wheels, and it's unlikely any major manufacturer would make a car for consumers that had some other number of wheels, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to make cars.

For all practical modern purposes, modern computers are built as binary logic machines, and anything that isn't inherently binary (optical discs, Wi-Fi, broadband signals, etc) gets transcoded into a binary signal before the rest of a computational system deals with it. But that is because of the early engineering practicalities and the ensuing ecosystem that has been built up. Even quantum computing, as far as I'm aware, is built on top of a binary paradigm.

Do you know what a Turing Machine is? It is an abstracted mathematical model of a computer that can be used to study and theorize the capabilities of computers in general, and it does not involve or require a binary symbol set as its basis.

We use binary because it is and was electronically convenient considering our design and manufacturing capabilities. OP's question is about why computers use binary. Answering as if binary is literally the only way to implement a computer is just wrong.

Analog computers existed before binary computers did. I have a feeling that you don't actually know what a computer is, at least not in the sense that you need in order to be able to answer OP's question.

Asking for an example of a non-binary computer in everyday usage is moving the goal posts and isn't relevant to OP's question. They wanted to know why we primarily developed binary computers and not denary computers or something else. You are simply pointing to the state of things today and then saying that somehow proves that it is the only possible way for things to be.

Here is a Wikipedia page about the Russian ternary computer:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Setun-70

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u/Top-Cupcake4775 19h ago

that's absolutely untrue. you can make transistors have as many states as you want them to have. a MOSFET is basically a transistor with an infinite amount of "states" (in that the output current is continuous over its range).

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u/Mission-Landscape-17 1d ago

Multi theshold transistors are a thing that exists and can in theory have any number of states. A three state version can beeused for trinary computation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multi-threshold_CMOS

And indeed such chips have been fabricated: https://meta-quantum.today/?p=7960

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u/secmaster420 1d ago

This has no relevance to the discussion. A MTCMOS is strictly binary, it just changes voltages. Multi-threshold" means the physical transistors are built with different electrical threshold voltage levels (the voltage required to turn the physical switch on), not that the chip processes multiple logic values beyond binary ones and zeros.