Why binary?
Binary is used due to the physical properties of hardware that we use.
- Modern computers use transistors that can either be on or off, best represented by binary.
- It’s also efficient for computing the logic of computation, such as boolean logic.
Before the discovery of electricity, mechanical computers used cogs and gears instead of electronic transistors. Hence, these usually used decimal or ternary.
Quantum computers don’t use transistors, and quantum logic doesn’t consider two states like Boolean logic.