Power? USB? Bluetooth? You’ve seen their symbols. Here’s where they came from...
They are road signs for your daily rituals—the instantly recognized symbols and icons you press, click and ogle countless times a day when you interact with your computer. But how much do you know about their origins?
For e.g, power symbol, better known as a circle with a point out the top, was not crafted from historical legend or greek mythology. It’s the result of engineers seeking symbolic efficiency. In WWII hardware, 1 labeled an "on" switch, and 0 represented "off." Eventually, these two merged to simply represent “power.” That's a neat evolution when you consider that the language of computers is a collection of 1s and 0s--which represents transistors turned on and off--known as binary code.
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