The Power of an Icon

It's very common these days for buttons to have icons on them instead of or in addition to text. And I'm not just talking about buttons on computer programs but buttons of physical devices as well. Take the following icon (and the slight variation) for example:



This icon represent the power button. In addition to computers you might have seen this icon on a radio, microwave, washer and dryer, etc. Although most people have seen this icon, I think few people know why it represents power.

The answer is so obvious you probably missed it. If you look closer at the icon you can see the icon is the number 0 and the number 1. One and zero, as in binary, on and off. So this icon represents power (on/off) because some "nerd" (and I use the term affectionately) decided to use binary as an icon to represent power.

So the next time you see this icon it might make a little more sense.