How was the first computer programmed? With what? How does it know 1 means yes and 0 means no?
In: Technology
A lot of comments address binary and logic gates, but your question is actually more subtle. At a fundamental level you can think of a computer as being all about doing math and manipulating numbers. But in order to “know” what the numbers mean, we have specialized circuits. Like for example, a speaker (really a DAC) interprets some numbers as sound. You monitor is a circuit that interprets numbers as images. A car has circuits that interprets numbers as accelerate or brake the car. Conversely, your mouse is a circuit that interprets movement as numbers. Your keyboard interprets keys being pressed as numbers. So you can think of the computer as being the brains that takes all the incoming numbers and has the logic to convert them to outgoing numbers.
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