There are a lot of ideograms and symbols that we see in our everyday life but we don’t bother to know the reason behind these symbols. The world has evolved a lot, earlier we use to push a button on and off in opposite directions and now we have a single button that turns on and off simply by touching it. A single button performs both the task and it never crosses our mind that the symbol on this power button may mean something. A small circle with a vertical line may present more than just a power button.
All the electronic gadgets carry this symbol to represent the power button yet we never think of it.
We bet you don’t know how that originated. This symbol is a result of the logical evolution in user interface design and we are going to tell you all about it.
The Wikipedia states “As technology became more ubiquitous, these English words were replaced by the universal numeral symbols 1 and 0 (typically without serifs) to bypass language barriers. This “1” and “0” standard is still used on toggle power switches.”
These symbols itself was derived from the Binary Number System. 1 stands for Power on, hence, it represents the vertical line on the power symbol and 0 indicates the power off that represent the small circle. Earlier these symbols were separately embedded on buttons for ON and Off but to create a single symbol for a single touch button these two symbols were merged with each other to create a new universally recognized power symbol.
Most of your friends around you may not know this so next time if you want to show off your knowledge skills, you know what topic to put on in front of them.
Surprise them with your intelligence!!
30 April, 2016
Avni S. Singh