What Is Binary Code, and How Do You Read It?

Why computers use binary

At their core, computers are made of switches that are either on or off. Binary — a number system with just two digits, 0 and 1 — maps perfectly onto those two states. Everything a computer stores, from text to images, is ultimately a long sequence of these bits.

How letters become binary

Each character has a number called a code point (for example, “A” is 65). That number is written in base-2 and padded to 8 bits, giving one byte per character. So “A” becomes 01000001. A whole word is just its characters’ bytes placed one after another.

How to read binary back to text

Split the binary into 8-bit groups. For each group, add the place values of the “1” positions (from right: 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128) to get the code point, then look up the character. For instance 01001000 = 72 = “H”. Our converters do this both ways instantly.

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