The Foundation of Digital Information

At its most fundamental level, computers store and process all information using the binary system.

This system uses only two digits: 0 and 1. These binary digits, or bits, represent two possible states, often corresponding to electrical signals being “off” (0) or “on” (1). Every piece of data – text, numbers, images, audio, video, programs – is ultimately translated into sequences of these 0s and 1s.

Bytes: Bits are often grouped into units of eight called bytes.

A byte can represent 256 different values (28), which is sufficient to encode basic characters.

Encoding Schemes: To represent more complex data like text characters, standard encoding schemes like ASCII and Unicode (UTF-8) are used.

These schemes define how specific sequences of bits or bytes correspond to letters, numbers, symbols, and characters from different languages. Understanding binary is crucial for grasping how computers fundamentally work and how they manipulate information.