Who Invented Binary Numbers?

[JustNotCricket]

Who invented binary numbers?

How many different binary codes have been invented?

[grasscarp]

Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/do_you_know/BinaryHistory.shtml

[ludwig]

1011001

[jomifl]

surely there is just 1?

[ludwig]

I think there might be one other jom, so 10 in total.

[JustNotCricket]

Leibniz from Leipzig 300 years ago. What a good man he was to do that for us.

I wonder whether he bothered to invent all of the other similar number systems at the same time? But I don't wonder too much because I have so many other things to do.

[jomifl]

Another kind of 1..amazing!

[Prudie]

Do you invent binary numbers or were they just discovered? In that case who invented our usual base 10 numbers? You can count in lots of different bases, 16 for example (Hex) uses 1-9 plus A B C D E and F. 15 in base 16 is F and 16 is 10.

[jim360]

Binary I think is a bona fide invention -- number systems such as decimal are used for convenience.

[jomifl]

Interesting point prudie, were they invented or were the discovered to exist as concepts in the human brain?

[Prudie]

That's what I was thinking, number systems actually exist, like other physical concepts such as light and are discovered rather than being invented.

[jim360]

It's an interesting idea and I can't discount it entirely. I think that Binary numbers is a form of notation though.

[Prudie]

I wouldn't call it notation though, it's numbers based on 2 so only needs two digits which traditionally is 0 and 1. base 3 only needs 0,1,2 etc etc.

[jim360]

Well I might be wrong, maybe I think too much in decimal. But at one level 110 and 20 and 12 and 11 and 10 and 6 are all representing the same number, and interact with other numbers in the same way. There is an isomorphism between different number systems all representing the natural numbers, or all number systems form a representation of the integers.

[Haggisdj]

There are 10 kinds of people, those who understand binary and those who do not...

[ToraToraTora]

No one invented binary, in the same way that no one invented base 10 or indeed base N. Maths was and is being discovered. Binary is useful in computers so it was necessary to discover it. By binary code I assume you mean computing code systems. There are many but mostly these days there are 3, ASCII, EBCDIC and BASE64.

[ToraToraTora]

Numbers are constant and as jim illustrates it's just the base that indicates what a number is. Most human day to day numbers are base 10 ie Ten symbols but really that's arbitrary. Computer programmers often think and do arithmetic in base 16 as a shorthand for base 2.

[dr b]

And all along I thought it was Professor Leonard Binary.

[jake-the-peg]

//No one invented binary, in the same way that no one invented base 10 or indeed base N//

Tell that to the Romans - 'Gauls! Bleedin' MMMMMs of them!'

Numbers systems are representations of numbers and are clearly invented methodologies - there's nothing 'discovered' about them.

The natural numbers are based on set theory, the set of all sets containing 3 things is 3.

But imagine a Universe that is tonally empty - it contains no matter, no light, nothing.

Does the number 3 still make sense? does it still exist? 3 'what'?

That might sound obtuse but Mathematics like to think of itself as pure completely disassociated from the physical universe

[By the way I have no idea what the answer to that is]

[ToraToraTora]

well we may be entering the realm of semantics here but maths is universal, we are just labelling our own discoveries within in it. 2+2=4 everywhere in the universe, independent of all language. Aliens in a galaxy far far away would agree but they would no doubt have different symbols for the numbers and operators but their maths is the same as ours. Similarly the number bases are merely there to be discovered and used as is convenient. we go 1 to 10 because it suits us but we did not invent base 10 it was there to be discovered.

[Prudie]

I have been for a nap and am now firmly decided. Nothing in maths is invented, including binary, it is a wondrous thing that has had its tool box slowly discovered. Pythagoras, for example, did not invent his theorem, he discovered that's what triangles do in the physical world.