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Modern electronic equipment and information systems, such as digital cameras and computers, rely upon the binary number system to process and communicate information. This is a positional numeric system which uses two as a base, as opposed to the widely understood decimal system which uses the more familiar base ten. The principal advantage of the binary system is that it employs only two different symbols, ie 1 and 0. It is therefore convenient when describing bi-stable or two-state systems with only "on" and "off", or "go" and "no go" states. Transistor-based integrated devices therefore typically accept and output data as short pulses that switch instantaneously between two voltages such as 1volt and 4 volts.

Binary data
 
 
COUNTING USING THE BINARY SYSTEM
Decimal 8-bit Binary Decimal 8-bit Binary
1 1 11 1011
2 10 12 1100
3 11 13 1101
4 100 14 1110
5 101 15 1111
6 110 16 10000
7 111 17 10001
8 1000 18 10010
9 1001 19 10011
10 1010 20 10100