Probando

The Indian scholar Pingala (circa 5th–2nd centuries BC) developed mathematical concepts for describing prosody, and in so doing presented the first known description of a binary numeral system.[1][2]He used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), making it similar to Morse code.[3][4]
A set of eight trigrams and a set of 64hexagrams, analogous to the three-bit and six-bit binary numerals, were known in ancient China through the classic text I Ching. In the 11th century, scholar and philosopher Shao Yong developed a methodfor arranging the hexagrams which corresponds to the sequence 0 to 63, as represented in binary, with yin as 0, yang as 1 and the least significant bit on top. There is, however, no evidence that Shaounderstood binary computation. The ordering is also the lexicographical order on sextuples of elements chosen from a two-element set.[5]
Similar sets of binary combinations have also been used intraditional African divination systems such as Ifá as well as in medieval Western geomancy. The base-2 system utilized in geomancy had long been widely applied in sub-Saharan Africa.
In 1605 FrancisBacon discussed a system whereby letters of the alphabet could be reduced to sequences of binary digits, which could then be encoded as scarcely visible variations in the font in any random text.[6]Importantly for the general theory of binary encoding, he added that this method could be used with any objects at all: "provided those objects be capable of a twofold difference only; as by Bells, byTrumpets, by Lights and Torches, by the report of Muskets, and any instruments of like nature".[6] (See Bacon's cipher.)
The modern binary number system was fully documented by Gottfried Leibniz in hisarticle Explication de l'Arithmétique Binaire[7](1703). Leibniz's system uses 0 and 1, like the modern binary numeral system. As a Sinophile, Leibniz was aware of the I Ching and noted with...