History of Computers - Binary Arithmetic
The modern Binary System, or Binary Arithmetic, was fully documented by Gottfried Leibniz in [insert date here]. The Binary System uses a series of 0's and 1's to communicate between machines. Because 0's are the absence of something, they are known as the "no" command, and 1's, being the presence of something, are known as the "yes" command. Digital computers will ultimately simplify everything into binary.
Overview
The Binary System is an enormously important item in the history of computers. Not only computers use it, however. Most electronic appliances communicate by translating commands and information into binary. Due to that fact, it is also commonly called "machine language". The 0's in 1's in the Binary System are known as bits, and the title awarded to every 8 bits is a byte.
While it is true that a few other figures have made significant progress in advancing the Binary System before Gottfried Leibniz, but Leibniz was the one who documented of modern binary. Leibniz was born in Germany in early July of 1646. His father died when he was six, and consequently his mother exerted her morals and values upon Leibniz, which led to an increased amount of philosophical thought in his later years. Leibniz was quite ahead of his time in terms of technological thinking. He thought of concepts and designs for hardware and software that were not truly worked out by computer scientists until much later by people such as Charles Babbage.
Binary conversions are simple if you understand the method. To find a numerical value of a number written in binary, you need to assign each bit a power of 2 starting from the right-most bit. The power depends on what order it is from the right-most bit.Then you add together the products. For example, 101101.
2^5 2^4 2^3 2^2 2^1 2^0 1 0 1 1 0 1 32 + 0 + 8 + 4 + 0 + 1 = 45
Therefore, 101101 is 45.
Significance
Links
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_numeral_system
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=define%3A+binary&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gottfried_Wilhelm_Leibniz
