100110

by Toby J. Swaford, K-12 Education Coordinator

October 1, 2010, is a day that many technophiles and computer programmers have greeted with much excitement.  It is significant in that the date can be viewed as a series of ones and zeroes, in this case 100110.  (For our friends outside the United States it may appear as 011010.)  So what’s the big deal?  Well, the 1st, along with the 10th and 11th of October, can be expressed as bits of binary code.  Factor in that the current year also ends in a one and a zero and some people get really excited.

What’s the big deal?  Binary code uses a series of ones and zeroes to express letters and commands to a computer with the ones representing “yes”, “true”, or “on” statements; while the zeroes represent “no”, “false”, or “off’.  The code is equivalent to turning a series of switches to an on or off position, with each configuration representing a different command.  If none of this makes sense, don’t worry too much.  As the saying goes, “There are only 10 types of people in the world: Those who understand binary – and those who don’t.”

You can also translate the alphabet into binary code. “A” = 01000001, “a” = 01100001, “B” = 01000010, “b” = 01100010, and so on.

We’ve left you some Coded Messages below. If you’re really ambitious, try decoding them with a binary alphabet key. However, if you’d like to let a computer do all the work (and, given that we’re discussing binary, that seems quite appropriate), you can have some fun with this translator: http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/.

01010100 01101000 01100001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 00100000 01110110 01101001 01110011 01101001 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01000110 01101111 01110010 01110100 00100000 01000011 01101111 01101100 01101100 01101001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01001101 01110101 01110011 01100101 01110101 01101101 00100000 00100110 00100000 01000100 01101001 01110011 01100011 01101111 01110110 01100101 01110010 01111001 00100000 01010011 01100011 01101001 01100101 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01000011 01100101 01101110 01110100 01100101 01110010 00100000 01110111 01100101 01100010 01110011 01101001 01110100 01100101 00101110

01000010 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01100100 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101011 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01001111 01110110 01100001 01101100 01110100 01101001 01101110 01100101 00100001