What is Binary?

At its core, a computer is just a massive collection of microscopic switches. These switches can only be in two states: On or Off.

In the language of computers, we represent "On" as 1 and "Off" as 0. This distinct two-state system is called Binary (or Base-2).

Bits and Bytes

Bit: A single 0 or 1. It's the atomic unit of data.
Byte: A group of 8 bits. This is the standard "chunk" computers use to represent a single character of text.

How to Read It

In our normal decimal system (Base-10), we count by tens (1s, 10s, 100s). In binary, each position represents a power of two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128).

Let's look at the letter 'A'. In the ASCII standard, 'A' has the numerical value of 65. To write 65 in binary, we just turn on the switches that add up to 65:

128	64	32	16	8	4	2	1
0	1	0	0	0	0	0	1

0 + 64 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 0 + 1 = 65 ("A")

So, 01000001 is just the computer's way of saying "65", which your screen knows to display as "A". Simple math, doing incredible things.

Binary Converter

What is Binary?

Bits and Bytes

How to Read It