Numbers as Text
Now we can use binary to make numbers, but how about text? How can we use 0s and 1s to make letters and words? To do that, we use a code. We call that code ASCII (pronounced "ask-key"), and it assigns each letter a specific number. It also has numbers for some other characters, such as spaces, commas, and question marks, as well as some functions we no longer use (like ringing a bell!). In ASCII, for example, we represent the letter 'A' using the number 65, and the letter 'a' as 97. There's no need to memorize this code, as you can look it up any time (or better yet, have a computer translate for you!). But you should understand how it works.
Note: ASCII is now just a small part of a huge set of characters called Unicode. Unicode includes characters in many languages, such as Chinese and Korean, as well as special-use characters like emoji. We still usually call the whole system ASCII even though it's technically not correct.
Example:
Let's spell out "Hello" in binary. We can look up the letters in the ASCII table to find their corresponding numbers: H is 72, e is 101, l is 108, and o is 111. Then we can convert each of those number to binary. Be careful to always include 8 digits for each letter! You may need to add 0s to the left part. For example, H is 01001000.
The entire message reads 01001000 01100101 01101100 01101100 01101111 00100001.
Here's a binary code for you to translate. You can convert each set of 8 digits into a number, and then look it up in the ASCII table. OR, you can find a shortcut ;)
01000010 01100101 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01100011 01101111 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 01101111 00100000 01100101 01101110 01110100 01110010 01100001 01101110 01100011 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110100 01101000 00100000 01100111 01101111 01110010 01100111 01100101 01101111 01110101 01110011 00100000 01100111 01100001 01100100 01100111 01100101 01110100 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01101101 01100101 01110011 01101101 01100101 01110010 01101001 01111010 01101001 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110110 01101001 01100100 01100101 01101111 00100000 01100100 01101001 01110011 01110000 01101100 01100001 01111001 01110011 00101100 00100000 01101100 01100101 01110100 00100000 01101101 01100101 00100000 01110010 01100101 01101101 01101001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01101001 01101110 01100110 01101111 01110010 01101101 01100001 01110100 01101001 01101111 01101110 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 01101100 01100101 01100100 01100111 01100101 00101100 00100000 01101011 01101110 01101111 01110111 01101100 01100101 01100100 01100111 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01100100 01101111 01101101 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01101001 01110011 01100100 01101111 01101101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01100110 01101111 01110010 01100101 01110011 01101001 01100111 01101000 01110100 00101110 00100000 01000101 01100001 01100011 01101000 00100000 01100111 01110010 01101111 01110111 01110011 00100000 01101111 01110101 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 00100000 01101111 01110100 01101000 01100101 01110010 00101100 00100000 01100001 01101110 01100100 00100000 01110111 01100101 00100000 01101110 01100101 01100101 01100100 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100101 01101101 00100000 01100001 01101100 01101100 00101110 00001010 11100010 10000000 10010101 00100000 01000001 01110010 01110100 01101000 01110101 01110010 00100000 01000011 00101110 00100000 01000011 01101100 01100001 01110010 01101011 01100101
