{"id":4754,"date":"2017-03-22T14:57:08","date_gmt":"2017-03-22T14:57:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/binary\/"},"modified":"2018-06-13T12:04:14","modified_gmt":"2018-06-13T12:04:14","slug":"binary","status":"publish","type":"definition","link":"https:\/\/www.techopedia.com\/definition\/6144\/binary","title":{"rendered":"Binary"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span id=\"what_does_binary_mean\">What Does Binary Mean?<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>In general, binary describes anything that is made up of two things or parts. In the context of information technology, binary is a base-2 numbering system that uses the numerals 0 and 1 for counting. It is used by digital computers to perform calculations from the simplest to the most complex.<\/p>\n<h2><span id=\"techopedia_explains_binary\">Techopedia Explains Binary<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>As the essayist Brian Hayes explained in a column in the American Scientist magazine, &ldquo;People count by tens and machines count by twos.&rdquo; Digital computers have used the binary numbering scheme since the development of electronic computing in the mid-20<sup>th<\/sup> century. While other systems have been attempted, such as base-3 or base-10, binary is ubiquitous in the computing field.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Turing&rsquo;s thought experiment, the Turing Machine, showed that any computable function could be calculated in binary. Today&rsquo;s computers, with their streaming sets of ones and zeros, operate exactly like a Turing Machine. It is binary logic that is at the core of virtually all the computing devices in the world.<\/p>\n<p>But not all computers are digital, and digital computers can theoretically use something other than binary. A ternary (base-3) computer was developed in the 1950s in Russia, and in the 1840s the Analytical Engine was designed using decimal (base-10). Future computers are expected to use quantum computing concepts, which will likely take computing far beyond its current capabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What Does Binary Mean? In general, binary describes anything that is made up of two things or parts. In the context of information technology, binary is a base-2 numbering system that uses the numerals 0 and 1 for counting. It is used by digital computers to perform calculations from the simplest to the most complex. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7813,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":""},"definitioncat":[241,242,217],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v20.12 (Yoast SEO v20.12) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What is Binary? - Definition from Techopedia<\/title>\n<!-- Added by HTTrack --><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /><!-- /Added by HTTrack -->
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