The modern binary number system was first studied in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries by
Thomas Harriot, and decades later by
Gottfried Leibniz, who is credited for the invention. However, systems related to binary numbers have appeared earlier in multiple cultures including ancient Egypt, China, Europe and India, e.g. in relation to
divination using
binary lots.
Egypt The scribes of ancient Egypt used two different systems for their fractions,
Egyptian fractions (not related to the binary number system) and
Horus-Eye fractions (so called because some historians of mathematics believed that the symbols used for this system could be arranged to form the eye of
Horus, although this has been disputed). Horus-Eye fractions are a binary numbering system for fractional quantities of grain, liquids, or other measures, in which a fraction of a
hekat is expressed as a sum of the binary fractions , , , , , and . Early forms of this system can be found in documents from the
Fifth Dynasty of Egypt, approximately 2400 BC, and its fully developed hieroglyphic form dates to the
Nineteenth Dynasty of Egypt, approximately 1200 BC. The method used for
ancient Egyptian multiplication is also closely related to binary numbers. In this method, multiplying one number by a second is performed by a sequence of steps in which a value (initially the first of the two numbers) is either doubled or has the first number added back into it; the order in which these steps are to be performed is given by the binary representation of the second number. This method can be seen in use, for instance, in the
Rhind Mathematical Papyrus, which dates to around 1650 BC.
China The
I Ching dates from the 9th century BC in China. The binary notation in the
I Ching is used to interpret its
quaternary technique of
divination.
Eight trigrams (Bagua) and a set of
64 hexagrams ("sixty-four" gua), analogous to the three-bit and six-bit binary numerals, were in use at least as early as the
Zhou dynasty of ancient China. Viewing the
least significant bit on top of single hexagrams in Shao Yong's square and reading along rows either from bottom right to top left with solid lines as 0 and broken lines as 1 or from top left to bottom right with solid lines as 1 and broken lines as 0 hexagrams can be interpreted as sequence from 0 to 63.
Classical antiquity Etruscans divided the outer edge of
divination livers into sixteen parts, each inscribed with the name of a divinity and its region of the sky. Each liver region produced a binary reading which was combined into a final binary for divination. Divination at Ancient Greek
Dodona oracle worked by drawing from separate jars, questions tablets and "yes" and "no" pellets. The result was then combined to make a final prophecy.
India The Indian scholar
Pingala (c. 2nd century BC) developed a binary system for describing
prosody. He described meters in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables). They were known as
laghu (light) and
guru (heavy) syllables. Pingala's Hindu classic titled
Chandaḥśāstra (8.23) describes the formation of a matrix in order to give a unique value to each meter. "Chandaḥśāstra" literally translates to
science of meters in Sanskrit. The binary representations in Pingala's system increases towards the right, and not to the left like in the binary numbers of the modern
positional notation. In Pingala's system, the numbers start from number one, and not zero. Four short syllables "0000" is the first pattern and corresponds to the value one. The numerical value is obtained by adding one to the sum of
place values.
West Africa The
Ifá is a West African divination system popular among the Yoruba tribe of the Old
Oyo Empire. Similar to the
I Ching, but has up to 256 binary signs, unlike the
I Ching which has 64. The number comes from squaring 16 which also matches the total possibilities in an 8-bit sequence. In Ifá divination, this reflects the possible outcomes called
Odú. These
Odú are determined using an
Ọpẹlẹ chain, which has 8 seeds. Each seed can land in one of two positions (open or closed) creating all the possible combinations. The Ifá originated in 15th century West Africa among
Yoruba people. In 2008,
UNESCO added Ifá to its list of the "
Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity".
Other cultures The residents of the island of
Mangareva in
French Polynesia were using a hybrid binary-
decimal system before 1450.
Slit drums with binary tones are used to encode messages across Africa and Asia.
Western predecessors to Leibniz In the late 13th century
Ramon Llull had the ambition to account for all wisdom in every branch of human knowledge of the time. For that purpose he developed a general method or "Ars generalis" based on binary combinations of a number of simple basic principles or categories, for which he has been considered a predecessor of computing science and artificial intelligence. In 1605,
Francis Bacon discussed a system whereby letters of the alphabet could be reduced to sequences of binary digits, which could then be encoded as scarcely visible variations in the font in any random text. In 1617,
John Napier described a system he called
location arithmetic for doing binary calculations using a non-positional representation by letters.
Thomas Harriot investigated several positional numbering systems, including binary, but did not publish his results; they were found later among his papers. Possibly the first publication of the system in Europe was by
Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz, in 1700.
Leibniz Leibniz wrote in excess of a hundred manuscripts on binary, most of them remaining unpublished. Before his first dedicated work in 1679, numerous manuscripts feature early attempts to explore binary concepts, including tables of numbers and basic calculations, often scribbled in the margins of works unrelated to mathematics. Leibniz's system uses 0 and 1, like the modern binary numeral system. An example of Leibniz's binary numeral system is as follows: Of this parallel invention, Leibniz wrote in his "Explanation Of Binary Arithmetic" that "this restitution of their meaning, after such a great interval of time, will seem all the more curious." The relation was a central idea to his universal concept of a language or
characteristica universalis, a popular idea that would be followed closely by his successors such as
Gottlob Frege and
George Boole in forming
modern symbolic logic. Leibniz was first introduced to the
I Ching through his contact with the French Jesuit
Joachim Bouvet, who visited China in 1685 as a missionary. Leibniz saw the
I Ching hexagrams as an affirmation of the
universality of his own religious beliefs as a Christian. Binary numerals were central to Leibniz's theology. He believed that binary numbers were symbolic of the Christian idea of
creatio ex nihilo or creation out of nothing.
Later developments In 1854, British mathematician
George Boole published a landmark paper detailing an
algebraic system of
logic that would become known as
Boolean algebra. His logical calculus was to become instrumental in the design of digital electronic circuitry. In 1937,
Claude Shannon produced his master's thesis at
MIT that implemented Boolean algebra and binary arithmetic using electronic relays and switches for the first time in history. Entitled
A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits, Shannon's thesis essentially founded practical
digital circuit design. In November 1937,
George Stibitz, then working at
Bell Labs, completed a relay-based computer he dubbed the "Model K" (for "
Kitchen", where he had assembled it), which calculated using binary addition. Bell Labs authorized a full research program in late 1938 with Stibitz at the helm. Their Complex Number Computer, completed 8 January 1940, was able to calculate
complex numbers. In a demonstration to the
American Mathematical Society conference at
Dartmouth College on 11 September 1940, Stibitz was able to send the Complex Number Calculator remote commands over telephone lines by a
teletype. It was the first computing machine ever used remotely over a phone line. Some participants of the conference who witnessed the demonstration were
John von Neumann,
John Mauchly and
Norbert Wiener, who wrote about it in his memoirs. The
Z1 computer, which was designed and built by
Konrad Zuse between 1935 and 1938, used
Boolean logic and binary
floating-point numbers. ==Representation==