Counting with Only 0 and 1: How Computers Store Numbers and Letters

Every photo, message and web page on your computer is stored as numbers written with just two digits: 0 and 1. That's binary, and it works on the same place-value trick you already use for decimal numbers, only with places worth 1, 2, 4, 8 and so on.

Flip eight switches to build a byte, see why one byte tops out at 255, and type any word to watch it turn into the actual bytes a computer stores, from plain ASCII letters to multi-byte emoji in UTF-8.