Binary Translator
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The Ultimate Guide to Binary Code
Everything you see on your screen right now this text, the colors, the images—is stored deep inside your computer as a massive sequence of zeros and ones. This is the Binary System (Base-2), the fundamental language of all modern electronics.
While humans use the Decimal system (Base-10) because we have ten fingers, computers use Binary because they run on electricity. A transistor can only be in two states: ON (1) or OFF (0).
How to Read an 8-Bit Byte
To convert binary to text manually, you need to understand "Place Value." In our normal numbers, we have the ones place, tens place, hundreds place, etc. In Binary, each position represents a power of 2.
| Power of 2 | 2⁷ | 2⁶ | 2⁵ | 2⁴ | 2³ | 2² | 2¹ | 2⁰ |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Value | 128 | 64 | 32 | 16 | 8 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| Example "A" | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Calculation: In the example above (Letter 'A'), we have a 1 at value 64 and a 1 at value 1.
64 + 1 = 65. In the ASCII standard, number 65 represents the capital letter 'A'.
What is ASCII and Unicode?
Computers need a map to know which number corresponds to which letter. This map is called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange).
- ASCII: Uses 7 or 8 bits. Can convert basic English letters, numbers, and symbols.
- Unicode (UTF-8): Uses up to 32 bits. This is the modern standard that allows computers to display Emojis (😂), Chinese characters (汉), and Arabic script (ع).
Why 8 bits in a Byte?
You often hear "8-bit," "16-bit," or "64-bit." Historically, early computers used different sizes, but the industry settled on 8 bits as a standard "chunk" of data, which we call a Byte.
With 8 bits, you can create 256 different combinations ($2^8$). This was just enough room to store the entire English alphabet (lowercase + uppercase), numbers 0-9, and common punctuation marks.
Common Binary Translations
| Character | Binary Code | Explanation |
|---|---|---|
| "Hello" | 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 | 5 bytes (40 bits) total |
| Space | 00100000 | ASCII Value 32 |
| @ | 01000000 | ASCII Value 64 |
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