What & How Your Dumb Computer Understands?

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You might be surprised to learn that no matter how colorful or complex things look on screen, deep inside, a computer only understands only current and nothing else.

So Start from the very basics, there are four main parts of a computer:

1. Monitor
2. C.P.U.
3. Keyboard
4. Mouse

Now Let’s see What is a Computer?

A computer is an electronic device.

Why is it called an electronic device?

Because it is made of electronic components like RAM, ROM, CPU, and Motherboard etc.

And these electronic components are made of electronic elements such as Registers, Capacitors, Diodes, Transistors, etc.

Now, these electronic elements understand only presence of current or absence of current.

So, electronic components are made of electronic elements, which means they also understand only presence of current or absence of current. And since a computer is made of electronic components, it also understands only presence of current or absence of current.

So we can say computer understand only presence and absence of current and nothing else.

The 0 and 1 Convention

For our convenience, we made a convention:

State	Status	Value
Presence of Current	ON	1
Absence of Current	OFF	0

Now we made a number system using 0 and 1 called Binary Number System. That’s why we say computer understands only Binary or 0 & 1.

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From the above explaination we have concluded that a computer understands only presence or absence of current, but a computer consists of—

1. Text
2. Image
3. Video
4. Audio

So, how are these types of data converted into presence or absence of current (0 & 1)?

Text into Current (0 & 1)

Now, how text is stored in memory?

Text data characters consists of alphabets, numbers, and symbols.

And every character has a unique numerical value representation called an ASCII value.

Lets See how text is stored in RAM

RAM is made of millions of capacitors.

• Capacitor charged – 1
• Capacitor uncharged – 0

We take an expample of “5” to see how the computer store the character in RAM.

The binary of 5 is – 101 (One capacitor charged, one capacitor uncharged, and one capacitor charged)

Similarly, the computer store the value A in RAM. the ASCII value of A is – 65, and the binary of 65 is – 1000001.

RAM is made of electronic elements, and after the electricity is gone, the capacitors of RAM become uncharged and the data is lost. That’s why RAM is called volatile memory.

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Now, how is it stored in the hard disk?

So basically, a hard disk is made of millions of magnetic materials arranged randomly (magnets).

• North pole up – 1
• North pole down – 0

Let the computer store the value 5 in HDD.

So, the binary of 5 is – 101 (One magnet with north pole up, one magnet with north pole down, and one magnet with north pole up)

Once these magnetic directions are set, they remain the same even when power is turned off. No electricity is required to keep the magnets in that state, and data remains safe in other words, data is not lost after power is turned off thats why it is called non-volatile memory.

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Image into Current (0 & 1)

Now, every image is made of tiny square dots called pixels. Each pixel is a combination of colors (RGB – Red, Green, Blue).

Now, color is sensation of vibration of atoms, and the vibration of atoms means moving electrons. Moving electrons are called current, so an image is also ultimately current.

Now, how is it stored in digital form?

• Red value – (0–255)
• Green value – (0–255)
• Blue value – (0–255)

Example Pixel

• R = 255
• G = 0
• B = 0

This pixel represents pure red.

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Audio into Current (0 & 1)

Audio is a wave caused by vibrations in air.

A microphone converts these vibrations into electrical signals. These signals are then converted into numbers using sampling.

Each sample is stored in binary form — again as 0s and 1s.

So even sound, in the computer, becomes binary data.

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Video into Current (0 & 1)

A video is simply a sequence of images (frames) shown very quickly, along with sound. So we can understand conversion of video into current by image’s and audio’s conversion.

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So whatever computer consist deep down everything is presence and absence of current (0 & 1) and it doesnt understand anything else whatever we see on the screen everything is just a representation of current (0 & 1) thats why we call computer a dumb machine.