HACKER Q&A
📣 graderjs

Why Are Computers 2-Bit?


Why Are Computers 2-Bit?


  👤 eimrine Accepted Answer ✓
Why are computers digital but not an analogue? Claude Shannon has answered this question. Digital signal is easy to amplify and keeping integrity of analogue signal is hard.

👤 stop50
You mean probably binary. Binary is easy to understand(on/off), while ternary(developed in the soviet union) were complicate to understand and implement.

👤 JoeMayoBot
MS Press recently released Charles Petzold's 2nd edition of Code. It provides insight into the evolution of computers, including Boolean logic and binary code: http://www.charlespetzold.com/books/

👤 Nomentatus
They haven't all been base two (binary.) But the efficiency of designing and building logic circuits for base two won out, soon enough. Building a circuit to say, add or divide numbers in base ten is more awkward, but it has been done. I think base three has been tried, too.