OfB.biz: Basic Lesson #4: Can You See It?

“In this lesson, we discuss more about stability issues. A
popular buzzword these days is ‘interface.’ That’s just a fancy
word implying that two or more people are face to face. In actual
practice, it usually means anything but face to face. It’s a means
of interacting with another. You are said to ‘interface’ by some
means. So it is with computers.

“Way back when the personal computer was first introduced, there
was a machine called the ‘Altair.’ It was a big box with some
switches and lights. You were supposed to know what the switches
did, and what the lights told you. It was basically a fancy number
cruncher. Except, the numbers were in binary, and up to 8 places.
Eight switches could be up or down, representing the eight digits
allowed in a binary number. Think back to your school math days,
and you may recall that binary means 1s and 0s only. That’s because
the electronic computer was based on–surprise!–electricity. With
electricity, it’s a simple matter of on or off. If you couldn’t
think in binary numbers, the Altair was pretty hard to use…”

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