|
|
Article: Digital Technology
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 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)
|
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY.
American engineers began developing digital technology in the mid-twentieth century. Their techniques were based on mathematical concepts suggested by the seventeenth-century German mathematician, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who proposed a binary computing system. His innovation inspired such numerical codes as American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) that described objects with digits.
Digital technology is a base two process. Digitized information is recorded in binary code of combinations of the digits 0 and 1, also called bits, which represent words and images. Digital technology enables immense amounts of information to be ...