Digital Codes

When was the last time you found a phone number using a telephone book, or used a physical map to find your destination? Younger readers may have never used such things. A big reason for such dramatic changes to the way we live our daily lives has to do with the development of digital coding. In fact, it is responsible for completely revolutionizing the world in which we live.

Fundamentally, digital code relies on a system of 1s and 0s that represent on and off circuits. This simple system allows for all of the digital technology that exists today. The first modern attempts to create such a code occurred in 1949, followed shortly by the advent of FORTRAN in 1951. FORTRAN was the first widely-used programming language, which did not need the input of actual 1s and 0s in order to complete a program. Digital coding languages continued to evolve through the 1970s until they started to have a noticeable effect on the lives of ordinary people, with the advent of personal computing. For the first time personal computers and the digital code they ran on were available to average people. Soon, progressively larger amounts of information was stored digitally, while an increasing amount tasks were able to be accomplished with the use of digital technology.

But the digital revolution was just beginning in the late 1970s and would not explode until the 1990s when it became possible for the home consumer to start sending digital information over telephone lines. Though university and military researchers began experimenting with sending digital information over telephones lines as far back as the 1970s, it was not until the 1990s that these methods became easy enough for non-technical people to use. It was during this time that the Internet was born.

The digital world began to explode. At the beginning of 1994 there were 700 websites; by the end of the year there were 10,000. The synergistic melding of computer microchip technology, digital coding languages, and mobile technologies gave birth to a world that cannot function without digital codes. From social media to online purchasing, 1s and 0s radically changed the world.