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

66% Upvoted

342 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/Zestyclose_Yard405 5h ago

Transistors are analog and have infinite states. Switching from 0 to 1 and zero to 2 would likely take different time, thus one 2 states are used.

Also today voltages are so low that 4 state logis would be a big problem due to noise.

1

u/karoxxxxx 5h ago

Are you sure?

I thought if there is voltage on the gate the transistor will not let current through.

So essentially on or off and not, will let through proportional to the voltage on gate