The Language Before the Hardware
The universal language in which computers carry out processor instructions originated in 17 th century in the form of the binary numerical system. Developed by German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, the system came about as a way to represent decimal numbers using only two digits, the number zero and the number one. His system was partly inspired by philosophical explanations in the classical Chinese text the “I Ching,” which understood the universe in terms of dualities such as light & darkness and male & female. While there was no practical use for his newly codified system at the time, Leibniz believed that it was possible for a machine to someday make use of these long strings of binary numbers. In 1847, English mathematician George Boole introduced a newly devised algebraic language built on Leibniz work. His “Boolean algebra” was actually a system of logic, with mathematical equations used to represent statements in...

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