Q. Illustrate the basic use of binary in IT ?

The binary system is thus useful in IT because not only any number, but any information, can be represented in terms of only 0s and 1s. The existence of only 2 states (0 and 1) can be signify in a variety of ways

• optically by a light being on (1) or off (0) e.g. optical communications
• on a paper or card by the presence (1) or absence (0) of a hole e.g. in the early days of computer input/output
• electrically by either a high voltage (1) or a low voltage (0) e.g. in digital electronics

By comparison of the use of the base-10 system would require the existence of 10 separate states to represent information-a much more complicated task.