Digital technology

Digital technology is a term used to describe computer- and electronic-based equipment that transfers information by breaking it down into numerical code. The numbers, or "digits," in digital technology are based on a system called binary code. This code uses a combination of 1s and 0s to record information such as sounds, words, and images. The information can then be sent from one source to another and reassembled on the receiving end. The process allows larger amounts of information to be condensed, stored, and transmitted quicker and more efficiently. Advances in digital capabilities have led to revolutionary new technology such as the internet and smartphones and changed the daily lives of people throughout the world.

Background

The binary number system can be traced back to the work of German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in the seventeenth century. While the familiar decimal system uses ten digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9), binary relies on only two (0 and 1). In this system, zero is represented by 0 and one is represented by 1. The number two is written as 10, three as 11, four as 100, and so on. Just as the decimal system raises each additional number "place" by a power of ten (1, 10, 100, 1,000), binary raises each additional place by a value of two (1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128). Reading binary numbers can be made easier by looking at them from right to left and adding the values of each column to the one before it. For example, the binary number 100 has a 0 value in the ones place and a 0 value in the twos place but a 1 value in the fours place—0 + 0 + 4 = 4. A five is written as 101 (1 + 0 + 4 = 5). Larger numbers add additional digit places, meaning the binary number 01101000 is equivalent to the decimal number 104 (0 + 0 + 0 + 8 + 0 + 32 + 64 + 0 = 104).

Computers and other digital devices use the binary system because it is much easier for their circuitry to process two digits instead of ten. In digital technology, each binary number represents a piece of information known as a bit, which is short for binary digit. Eight bits is equal to one byte, which is a common measuring stick for the memory capabilities of digital technology. These bits are stored in the memory of a device by millions of electronic switches called transistors. Digital technology represents binary information by switching the transistor values into "on" and "off" positions, with 1 representing "on" and 0 "off." Digital devices decode the binary information by reading the "on-off" pattern of the switches.

Overview

Nineteenth-century British inventor Charles Babbage is often credited with inventing the first digital computing device. In the 1830s, Babbage proposed what he called an Analytical Engine, a machine that used steam power and the binary system to perform basic math calculations. While Babbage never built the device, his concepts were considered sound by later researchers when they rediscovered his ideas a century later. In the early 1940s, American physics professor John V. Atanasoff built the first electronic computing device, a machine that could perform up to twenty-nine calculations at the same time. A few years later, two researchers at the University of Pennsylvania constructed the first large-scale electronic digital computer. The Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calculator (ENIAC) filled an entire room and had more than eighteen-thousand vacuum tubes.

The development of transistors in the 1950s allowed more information to be stored in a smaller space and led to the creation of the microchip. As a result, computers were able to be made smaller. In the 1960s, a joint effort between scientists and the US military created the precursor of the modern internet. Three decades later, millions of people across the globe were linked through a vast network of computers, sparking a revolution in communications, social interaction, and commerce. In the early days of the internet, digital information had to coexist with technology that relied on analog capabilities. Analog technology records or transmits information using variable physical characteristics, such as sound waves or electrical signals. To send digital information from a source device, it first had to be converted into an analog signal and sent over a medium—usually a standard telephone line. The recipient would need to turn the information back into its digital format to be read by the receiving device. "Translating" the signal was done by a device called a modem, which is short for modulator-demodulator. By the early twenty-first century, many data transmissions were made directly through digital means. In the United States, for example, most television networks ceased broadcasting analog signals in 2009 and switched entirely to digital.

Since computers and other digital technology only read numbers, the digital information must be changed from raw binary data back into its original form. Pictures, for instance, are made up of tiny, colored dots called pixels. Each pixel has its own binary signature that tells the computer how much red, green, or blue is needed to properly color it. Text and nonnumeric characters are translated using a 127-character system called the American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). In ASCII, a lowercase "a" is represented as 0110000, while an uppercase "A" is 01000001.

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, digital music and movies were recorded on compact discs (CDs) and digital video discs (DVDs) by storing the binary information on plastic-coated aluminum discs. The digital information was transferred by laser to the disc in a spiral pattern of tiny pits and bumps—the pits representing 1s and the bumps 0s. DVDs could hold more data than CDs because the pits and bumps are smaller and closer together. CDs and DVDs became largely obsolete by the 2010s, as digital streaming services gained in popularity. Such services bypassed the need for a physical object such as a CD by transmitting the binary data over the internet directly to a device such as a computer or smartphone. The data is sent as a bitstream, or a continuous sequence of bits.

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