In the past, experts developed calculating machines that worked with three digits, a ternary system, that they hoped would allow for more efficient information processing. In principle, any number ...

With decimal numbers there are "only" 10 possible values a single digit can be; 0 through 9, and to get numbers larger than 9 we just start adding more digits to the front.

In the late 1930s, Claude Shannon showed that by using switches that close for "true" and open for "false," it was possible to carry out logical operations by assigning the number 1 to "true" and 0 ...

Binary is a number system that only uses two digits, 0 and 1. It was invented by German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Binary code is used widely in computer programming, so it is ...

They find that the former Mangarevans combined base-10 representation with a binary system. They had number words for 1 to 10, and then for 10 multiplied by several powers of 2.

But for numbers 20 through 80, they used a binary system, with separate, one-word terms for 20, 40 and 80. For really large numbers, they used powers of 10 up to at least 10 million.