“01100010011010010110111001100001011100100110100101101111”. Believe it or not, that is equivalent to the word “binary”. We might need a translator or converter to read that string, but basically anything that behaves like a computer (to a greater or lesser extent) has no problem interpreting it. Now, how to explain the binary system in a different way than “01100101011100110111010001100101”? Artist Jason Shiga took a very curious route: building a paper binary calculator.
In elementary school they taught me to use the abacus. At first we were a group of confused kids moving pieces and placing rings, but within a few weeks we looked like those merchants we see in Chinese martial arts movies. Today I remember absolutely nothing of that process, and if you hand me an abacus, I might place it as decoration on my cluttered desk next to my hourglass and my fortune cat that used to wave its left arm (before it met the law of gravity firsthand).
Thirty years later, “classical education” intends for a whole new generation of students to sit in front of a computer and start writing code, but wouldn’t it be more logical to begin with the functioning of the computer itself? Many dismiss that idea by saying “it’s all binary, zeros and ones”, yet there is nothing wrong with creating something that helps visualize the process, especially if it targets the little ones.
The Numberphile Video
And so we come to a video published by the folks at Numberphile, featuring artist Jason Shiga, creator of a curious but very simple binary calculator made of paper. The calculator is so simple in design that it only allows addition, although it takes very different paths once the initial value is chosen. The calculator also indicates when you need to flip a piece of paper, or when to continue along the route. Depending on the two initial choices, the results can be three: 0, 1, or 10 (!).
If all this has interested you, you could explore similar projects on YouTube, and they are not necessarily binary, like the one you can see below.
https://old.neoteo.com/procesador-de-papel-curiosidad/
