The binary number system is the second most common after the usual decimal, although few people think about it. The reason for this demand is that it is used in computer technology. We’ll talk about this later, but for a start - a few words about what the number system is.
This phrase designates a recording system or other visual representation of numbers. This is a dry definition. Unfortunately, not everyone understands what is hidden behind these words. However, everything is quite simple, and the first number system appeared at the same time when a person learned to count. The easiest way to represent numbers is to identify some objects with others, well, at least the fingers on your hands and the number of fruits collected in a certain time. However, fingers are much smaller than can be countable objects. They began to be replaced with sticks or dashes on sand or stone. This was the very first number system, although the concept itself appeared much later. It is called non-positional, because each digit in it has a strictly defined meaning, regardless of what position it occupies in the record.
But such a recording is extremely inconvenient, and later the idea came to group objects and designate each group with a stone, not a stick, or a picture of a different shape when recording. This was the first step towards creating positional systems, which include the binary number system. However, they finally formed only after the invention of numbers. Due to the fact that initially it was more convenient for people to count on the fingers, which a normal person has 10, it was the decimal system that became the most common. At the disposal of a person using this system of numbers, from 0 to 9. Accordingly, when a person reaches 9, that is, when he exhausts the supply of numbers, he writes a unit to the next digit, and sets units to zero. And this is the essence of positional number systems: the value of numbers in a number directly depends on what position it takes.
The binary number system provides for calculations only two digits, it is easy to guess that it is 0 and 1. Accordingly, new bits appear when writing in this case much more often: the first transition of the register occurs already at number 2, it is the binary system that is designated as 10.
Obviously, in writing this system is also not very convenient, why is it so in demand? The thing is that when building computers, the decimal system turned out to be extremely inconvenient and disadvantageous, since manufacturing a device with ten different states is quite expensive, and they take up a lot of space. So they adopted the binary system invented by the Incas.
Translation into a binary number system is unlikely to cause difficulties for anyone. The easiest and most understandable way to do this is to divide the number by two, until the answer yields zero. In this case, the residues are recorded separately from right to left sequentially. Consider an example, take the number 73: 73 \ 2 = 36 and 1 in the remainder, units are written in the far right position, all further balances are written to the left of this unit. If you did everything correctly, then you should have the following number: 1001001.
How does a computer translate a number into a binary number system, because we enter decimal numbers from the keyboard? Does it also divide by 2? Of course not. Each button on the keyboard corresponds to a specific line in the encoding table. We press a button, a program called a driver sends a certain sequence of signals to the processor. That, in turn, sends a query to the table, which character corresponds to this sequence, and displays this character on the screen, or performs an action if necessary.
Now you know how important the binary system is in our lives. Indeed, a lot of things in our world are now being done with the help of electronic computing systems, which, in turn, would be completely different if this system had not existed.