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Article: Digital Computing
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- Computer Sciences
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Digital Computing
There are two basic data transfer and communication systems in computing technology
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digital and analog. Analog systems have continuous input and output of data, while digital systems manipulate information in discrete chunks. Although digital devices can use any numeric system to manipulate data, they currently only use the binary number system, consisting of ones and zeros. Information of all types, including characters and decimal numbers, are encoded in the binary number system before being processed by digital devices. In mixed systems, where sensors may deliver information to a digital computer in analog form, such as a voltage, the data have to be ...