Geek Gruel
Why binary?
When you touch the small letter "a" on my keyboard, this is the code that I send to the processor: 01100001
Which means nothing to you and me, but to the little machine that I am typing this explanation on, it means a great deal. The electrical impulse that is sent down your keyboard wire, flows onto something that is loosely refereed to as The Data Bus and travels to the processor, The Brain. The processor processes the info and puts it back out on The Data Bus heading toward the Video Card. The Video Card is where my monitor is plugged in and the small letter "a" is displayed on my screen as fast as I can type.
Every keyboard stroke has a different binary code. (abcdefg both upper and lower case >,<.*&%$#@ ) they are all different commands to the processor. When I hit the Delete key on my keyboard, this is the code: 01111111
And the item goes bye bye.
Binary code is simple electrical impulses on wires. A 0 means that the wire doesn't have electricity on it and a 1 means that it does.
So when, in the first example of the latter "a", 01100001, reading from left to right - the first 0 means the first wire has no electricity, the second wire has electricity, the third wire has electricity, the fourth does not; and so on a so forth. When those 3 wires are lit with electricity in that exact sequence, then the computer knows to display the letter "a" on your screen.
Remember:
There are only 10 types of people in the world - those who understand binary and those who don't.
(If you have trouble figuring this one out, email me - dave@daverhoades.com)
Links in no particular order:
Tim Berners-Lee the architect of the Internet
Open Systems Interconnection (OSI)