What are/were they meant to represent? When were they introduced? I can’t find any consistent reliable sources. I’d really appreciate references if anyone has any!
In: 27
The “I” represents a closed circuit, meaning electricity is reaching the thing it is supposed to be powering, therefore it is ON. The “O” represents an open circuit, meaning the electricity is not reaching the thing it is supposed to be powering, so it is OFF.
It’s from binary. It basically represents transistors or logic gates, where when you have a ton of transistors you can manipulate 0 and 1s aka true and false to create complex things by feeding input (electricity) into a circuit and then open and close transistors to get a desired output.
Fun fact: if the 1 intersects the 0, it’s a standby power switch, meaning that switch doesn’t completely power off the device. Consequently, if the 1 is inside the circle, that single switch (usually a latching push button) toggles between compete off and compete on.
I have not even looked at the comments, but 1 is an ON and 0 is an off, and comes from base 2 Mathematics, in other words Binary. It is the fundamental basic of transistors.
1 – Power applied
0 – Power not applied.
It is how the RAM in your computer works, it is how the CPU works.
I think it has to do with the male/female terms found in the electronics/electrician trade. My grandfather was a union electrician by trade, and he taught me a lot. My father worked on circuit boards. He also taught me a lot. This being said…although these terms might be outdated, they refer to certain part of their respected trades as male and female. INPUT/OUTPUT
Your question, brings back to me a weird convo with my grandfather, when he was trying to explain to me why the outlet wasn’t working. He said something along the lines that the male was ready to go, but the female, wouldn’t put out. He thought this was hilarious. But that’s how I remember I/O.
Binary is setup as a “1” and “0”, or “on” and “off”, respectively. It’s easier to put a 1/0 instead of on/off as it is a universal language.
Everything runs on binary. Which is a series of 0 and 1s. 1 signifies it’s letting an electric signal pass through it. 0 means it isn’t. So, 0 means OFF and 1 (|) means ON.
They are merely two symbols with universal meaning. They don’t have any semantic meaning in themselves. There is no point in trying to reverse some sort of meaning back into them.
They could just as well have standardised on a square and a picture of a parrot.
I always assumed because binary 1 means on and 0 means off. Used in logic gates in digital electronics.
It is early & basic programming language called binary where the number 1 represents power & 0(zero) represents no power. So the symbol for on became 1( one) & off or no power is 0.
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