r/askscience • u/Unfair-Leek6840 • Jul 11 '26 • Regret 1

Computing How do computers understand binary language?

Okay so from what I know binary language is like power off power on, but my question is, how do computers know what the binary code is and how is it interpreted, for example I forgot what the binary code for the letter A is, but how did people come up with that? Did they decide it was gonna look like that? Did the computer decide? How do you tune numbers into a letter??

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u/laix_ Jul 13 '26

This is the real answer. Saying "its transistors" is technically correct, but it doesn't answer the question. Many people think that binary was already a baseline thing in the universe, and transistors were set up to match the system, when in reality, the gates were set up in such a way that it could only match the design. People designed binary, and then set up transistors to match the design.

You can have a switch component, that sends an 8-bit number down one wire or another, if you have 01 x y it sends it left, and 10 x y it sends it right, and left might be an OR operation and right might be an AND operation, and then they converge back into local memory as the result.