It is not very easy for everyone to visualize how a computer works and how all the parts that are masked inside beautiful body justify their presence there.
I used to wonder by looking inside the CPU(Central Processing Unit) of my first computer, which I received in 2002, that how so many components were able to co-ordinate and co-operate.
So let’s try to understand it.
Digital Computer that we know each other is the result of humankind old habit to play around with Numbers i.e., Digits and hence the name Digital. Initially, computers were solely used to carry out calculations on numbers. Their role was bound to certain domain areas of the world that was only interested in calculating and analyzing the numerical data. Numbers as we know today, which I started learning in kindergarten have their base 10. Means, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4…..9. All other numbers are just a combination of these 10 Numbers or Digits.
Now you and I know, that we humans love to talk in circles when we don’t want to answer something, or we don’t know the answer. After all, our human tendency doesn’t let us show our ignorance. But when it comes to the situation where we need guidance, we want a very discrete result. We hate answers or results or statements that fuzzy or not clear.
Digital computers were designed keeping these things in mind. Although base 10 gives us discrete ten digits, which are easy to comprehend, still we want to narrow it more. Sometimes expressing the answer in even ten numbers cause great confusion. If I rate a movie 8 out of 10, you probably think it’s a good movie. What if 7 or 6 ratings, I mean you will say that something is not right with this movie. What if in response to your question I say, YES/NO or TRUE/FALSE. You will be more evident in understanding my answer. Yes, these answers may sound very strict to you, but they bring speed to the decisions.
That’s what brought the binary system into the existence, and the modern definition of Digital Computers got redefined. The computers which understand, store, analyze, process the data in binary digits, which are 0 and 1. You can take these 0,1 as No/Yes, True/False format of the result. Binary digits have base two and what it suggests that any given information can be expressed in the combination of just two numbers (0,1). People defined alphabets, various signs, symbols in the form of binary digits (ASCII) and that made things much simpler to the machine and also to programmers to write code.
Other number systems also exist, like hexadecimal, octal, but still the most used is binary. After all, if you want to express electricity that runs every electrical/electronic machine, you only have two option, OFF/ON.
I hope the existence of Digital computer is making sense to you all.
Yash