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
It’s circuit based but lot of people seem to get confused because of thr shape.
It’s a very old, 1700 or earlier convention that is kinda crazy.
You have a water wheel you want to turn on or off to bring power to your machines. You have two water ways and in order to get power you direct the water down a specific water way.
You put the boards into the water way you want to block to cause the water to flow to your water wheel. Your closing the the eaiser path for the water. When you turn off the power requirement you remove the boards and this lets the water through the gap.
When we got to steam and electricity the same concepts are there, just represented differently. For steam you open ( this opening a pipe ) to let the steam out to turn something off. You close or cover the pipe to turn it on. Open is O.. Closed is I like a board or a metal cover.
Electricity the same thing, except for electricity there isn’t a visible change.
There are a few sources on the internet that support the 1 means on and 0 means off theory.
* Stack Exchange gave [it 72 upvotes](https://ux.stackexchange.com/questions/81284/what-is-the-origin-of-the-power-icon)
* LGR has a YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKCFDBPvJ74).
* [Wikipedia says:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_symbol)
>The well-known on/off power symbol was the result of the logicalevolution in user interface design. Originally, most early powercontrols consisted of switches that were toggled between two statesdemarcated by the words On and Off. As technology becamemore ubiquitous, these English words were replaced with the universalsymbols line “|” and circle “◯” (typically without serifs) to bypass language barriers.
Furthermore, those arguing that the 0 sign represents an open circuit should know that an open switch looks like ___/ _____ in a circuit diagram, like a broken line.
See I always thought it was Zero and One. 0 meant nothing or off, and 1 meant something or on. Apparently I have been wrong all these year.
So I still think people are over-complicating this.
0 is nothing, as in off.
1 is something as in on.
Arabic numerals are one of the most universally recognized. The concept doesn’t need translation.
Literally any other marking used would be in some language that some portion of the world wouldn’t get.
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.
I always assumed because binary 1 means on and 0 means off. Used in logic gates in digital electronics.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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