This is a day that only happens once every one thousand years but you could say that about any specific date in a millennium. Many people like to make much of numbers and dates but really was June 6, 2006 (666) the day of the devil? Nope, don't think so. I guess the only number that will remain for some time is 911 being the day the United States was attacked by some really sick and hateful people, as well as the emergency number for help.
So today might just as well be related to the binary or base-2 numbering system. A series of ones and zeros is how you are reading this post. A zero symbolizes an off signal and a one indicates on. So why is this fundamental to Binary Day? Here goes.
Back in the day, I'm talking 1873, Frederick
Guthrie discovered that some elements will transmit energy when they are heated. This is known as the thermionic emission effect. It wasn't really put to use until the early 1900's when the vacuum tube was invented. The materials used in vacuum tubes required relatively (to todays microprocessor standards) high power to heat the elements in order for them to work. That's why they glowed in the back of your parents, or grand parents TV or radio receiver.
So how do we get from tubes to bits? After all, one is analog and the other is digital. Energy flows through a tube and there for it is an analog device. However the properties of the tube make it a switch of sorts that can provide either an on or off signal. Taking this line of thinking further a simple relay does the same thing. Look at the diagram below to see how a relay works electrically.
As power is applied via the control power. the coil generates a magnetic field that pulls the core of the contactor down. With unswitched power (hot) at one side of the points, when the contactor completes the circuit the power is allowed to flow to the switched side of the circuit. There are many application for relays as they allow a light power load to control a heavy power load. Again in a logical manor, a relay is either on or off, when a decision has been made to activate the relay, the circuit is on.
Moving into solid state December 23, 1947 was a significant date. It was when Bell Labs created the first working transistor. No moving parts hence the term solid state.
Looking at the diagram above, it is very similar in logic to the relay in function. The Base receives a charge which allows the flow of electrons from the Emitter to the Collector. The point here is it functions like a switch. It is either on or off. The next movement in technology was the advent of the logic circuit. As best I can describe, these function as though a number of transistors were housed in the same unit and allowed more than just a single on/true or off/false answer but also an and / or option to the logic (get it? Logic Circuit) Admittedly this technology came to being as my electronic education was tapering off. Honestly I had not kept up with this level of geekdom until mid 1980. This was the year of my computerize birth so to speak. I bought a Tandy (Radio Shack) TRS-80 with 16Kb of memory and no drives. Programs loaded from a cassette tape. Of course this was all new and exciting and to this day my wife can not understand my excitement about making the word "Hello" flash on and off in black and white. With the limited electronic knowledge I had attained, transitioning to ones and zeros was pretty easy.
Still where does all this background tie into Binary Day? 101010 is October 10, 2010, a simple series of ones and zeros (starting to get the idea?) In the digital argument world, a one is considered on or a true answer to an argument and a 0 is off or false. As only two numbers (zero is a number) are used naming it a binary order is appropriate. So lets look at the following diagram as an argument.
Given a singular argument there is only one answer, either true or false equating to on or off, or in the binary world 0 or 1. This logic is not new, in fact in the year of our Lord 1732, discrete bits were used in punched cards invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon. So much for new ideas! The solid state circuit and microprocessor allowed this vast amount of information to be stored and processed in higher numbers than humanly possible. I actually took a computer course in college that I dropped because I found typing up punch cards to be extremely boring.
Anyhow in the diagram above there are two sets of arguments which result in four possible answers.
The possibilities are 11, 10, 01, and 00 which define this as two bit logic. You may be familiar with 8 bit, 16 bit, 32 bit, and 64 bit processors. Nintendo didn't call it N64 for no reason at all. When we expand the two bit logic consider the following:
00 = 2 bit
0000 = 4 bit
00000000 = 8 bit and so on.
if you continue the logical arguments from the diagram as being four possibilities, eight bit would produce 256 different possibilities; 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 is how the math works out as bits are added. Sooo... As this was posted on 10-10-10 at 10 in the morning it is a full eight bit day. Now it would be just too ironic to see if it had 256 words.
This is a little peek (pardon the pun) into my brain so don't be afraid, no live brain sells were actually injured in this blog post.
See Ya Later... Doug
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