binary code,code used indigital computers, based on abinary number system in which there are only two possible states, off and on, usually symbolized by 0 and 1. Whereas in adecimal system, which employs 10 digits, each digit position represents apower of 10 (100, 1,000, etc.), in abinary system each digit position represents a power of 2 (4, 8, 16, etc.). A binary code signal is a series of electrical pulses that represent numbers, characters, and operations to be performed. A device called a clock sends out regular pulses, and components such astransistors switch on (1) or off (0) to pass or block the pulses. In binary code, each decimal number (0–9) is represented by a set of four binary digits, orbits. The four fundamental arithmetic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) can all be reduced to combinations of fundamentalBoolean algebraic operations on binary numbers. (See thetable below for how the decimal numbers from 0 to 10 are represented in binary.)