I'm curious to know if it would be possible to create a computer that uses binary that can go from 0000 up to 9999 by having true and false be 1 and 0, but add numbers 2-9 to get more possibilities for numbers. Is binary code only consisting of 0's and 1's for simplicity? Is it because for some reason computers can only understand True and False?
Binary code starts with 0 (0000) and increases to 1 (0001) to 2 (0010) and 10 (1010). Could is be possible for a computer to recognize 0's and 1's but then go to 2's and other numbers? For example, 0000 = 0, 0001 = 1, 0002 = 2, 0009 = 9 then 0010 = 10, and so on.
If this isn't possible somehow, please explain why and give a general explanation of how computers work because I'm interested and want to learn more. If this isn't used because it's inefficient, please epxlain what makes it inefficient and what makes 0's and 1's more efficient.
Thank you.
I expect that it would be possible to create a computer like this but I searched online and couldn't find out why binary code can't have numbers other than 0's and 1's.
Answer to myself for future reference:
Binary is based on Boolean Algebra because it's a base 2 system, and Decimal is a base 10 system that goes from 0-9 instead of 0 or 1 like Binary which is a base 2 system. Computers easily understand binary because its based off on and off states (0 or 1) with 0 being off and 1 being on. Computers use logic gates which are composed of a multitude of transistors that use boolean logic to store data for the computer. Binary makes hardware convenient for computers. Other number systems are used for other purposes different from Binary's purpose. For example, hexadecimal is used to represent numbers that are large in a more simple way that decimal is able to, take the number one million for example,in decimal, it would be 1000000, in binary it would be 11110100001001000000, and in hexadecimal it would be F4240. This is why the Binary number system is based off boolean alegbra and why computers use binary and not other number systems.
It is based on how the data is stored. Each piece of data stored in your memory can have only two values. Think of your memory as a number of glasses which can either be empty or full. Which means the data is stored as bunch of 1s and 0s. This is the result of moving from analog systems to digital, analog values can be between 0 and 1. In analog systems for example, you can have 0.25 or 0.7. But since computers became digital, the logic became binary. It will be really beneficial to research the history of computers and learn how they evolved over time, if you are interested in this topic.