What is wrong with this button?

Recently I was going through my memory box and I came across this button. It was given out by the hundreds at a conference in the 1970s. . What is the spirit of 100110 you ask? That represents the number 38 which doesn’t seem to mean much. And it really doesn’t because that is not the number that was supposed to be there.

Who ever was in charge of printing the buttons left off a zero where the period is located. That dropped the value in half to 38 when it was supposed to represent 76. Yes, this button was intended to honor the 200th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence.

My guess is that the Binary number was meaningless to the person who proofread the button. Clearly, not a computer person.

This brings me back to my regular comments about the need for teaching computing foundational concepts. Sure, this button thing is fairly trivial but Binary concepts and indeed number concepts are pretty important for many things beyond programming.

Boolean algebra is another concept that is foundational to computer science that shows up in many areas. Foundational computing concepts are essential knowledge for people to understand the world around them as it exists today and how it will develop in the future.

I’m probably preaching to the choir here but I feel like somethings need repeating. The button is a fun story too!