electricity.

Two of those connections are places where

electricity may be put into the device, and the third
connection is a place where electricity may come out of
the device.
Of the three connections, two of them are called
“inputs,” because electricity can be sent to them from
somewhere else. The third connection is called the
“output” because electricity can come out of it and then
be sent somewhere else.
This computer part is a device that does something with
bits. If you have two bits, and you connect those two
bits to the inputs, this device “looks” at those two
bits, and “decides” whether to turn the one output bit
on or off.
The way it “decides” is very simple, and is always the
same. If both inputs are on, the output will be off. If
one or both of the inputs are off, then the output will
be on. That’s just the way that the room with the odd
light switches worked.
Remember that there is nothing but bits inside the
computer. This simple device is where bits come from and
where they go to. The “decision” that this device makes
is how bits come to be turned on and off in a computer.
Two bits go into the device, and one bit comes out. Two
bits come from somewhere else, are examined by the
device, and a new third bit is generated so that it may
go somewhere else.
If you have been extra observant, you may have asked
yourself this question: “when both inputs are off, the
output is on, so…. how do you get electricity at the
output if both inputs are off?” Well, that is an
excellent question, and the excellent answer is that
every one of these devices is also connected to power.
Like every appliance or table lamp in your house, where
each has a plug with two pins, this device has a pair of
wires, one of which is connected to a place where the
electricity is always on, and the other is connected to
a place where the electricity is always off. This is
where the electricity for the output comes from. When
someone builds a computer, they have to make all of
those power connections to each one of those parts in
order to have it work, but when we are drawing diagrams
20
of parts, how they are connected, and what they will do,
we won’t bother drawing the power wires – they would
just clutter up the drawing. It is understood that each
part has its power connection, and we don’t worry about
it. Just understand that it is there, and we won’t
mention it any more for the rest of the book. I wouldn’t
have even mentioned it here except that I figured that
you’d probably ask yourself that question sooner or
later.
Now I know I said that you don’t have to understand much
about electricity to understand computers. Here is as
complicated as it gets. There are actually a half dozen
electronic parts inside of this device that make it
work, but we are not going to examine those parts in
this book. Someone who has an electronics background
could look at what’s in there, and in about 30 seconds
would say “Oh yeah, if both inputs are on, the output
will be off, and for any other combination the output
will be on, just like the book says.” And then that
person could go ahead and read this book without ever
having to think about what’s in there again. Someone who
doesn’t know electronics misses out on those few seconds
of understanding, but this book is the same for
everyone.
In normal house wiring, one switch turns one light on
and off. In the computer, it takes two switches, and
it’s sort of backwards in that they both have to be on
to turn the light off. But if you accept the fact that
something could be made that operates this way, you can
then understand how everything in the computer works.
This type of computer part is in fact the ONLY type of
part required to build a computer. Of course it takes a
lot of them to build a complete computer, but with
enough of them, you can make any type of computer. So
there you go again, see how simple a computer is? It is
just full of this little type of thing – a lot of them
to be sure, but this is all there is.
Now we need to give this device a name, this thing
inside the computer that bits are made of, it is called
a “gate.” I can’t find a good reason why it is called a
gate, a gate in a fence lets people through when it is
open, and stops people when it is closed. A computer
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gate generates a third bit from two other bits, it
doesn’t open and close or stop or let anything through.
The meaning of this computer term “gate” doesn’t seem to
fit into the common meaning of the word, but sorry, I
didn’t make up the name, that’s just what it is called.
You’ll get used to it. At least it isn’t some long word
from the ancient Greek.
In the next few chapters, we are going to show how we
can do something useful by connecting several gates
together. We will use drawings like the following. The
‘D’ shape with the little circle at its tip represents
the device we have described, and the lines represent
the wires going in and coming out of it that get
attached to other parts of the computer. The picture on
the left shows a gate complete with its power wires, but
as promised, we won’t be concerned with them for the
rest of this book. The drawing on the right shows
everything we need:
This is a representation of a gate. The two wires on the
left (a and b) are the inputs, and the wire on the right
(c) is the output. All three wires are bits, which means
that they are either on or