🔢 Number Base Converter

Computers use binary because transistors — the fundamental building blocks — have two states: on (1) and off (0). This maps perfectly to binary. Everything a computer does, from adding numbers to displaying images, ultimately reduces to manipulating sequences of 0s and 1s.

Hex is used because one hex digit represents exactly 4 binary bits (a nibble), so two hex digits = one byte. This makes it far more human-readable than binary while still mapping cleanly to how computers work internally. It's widely used for memory addresses, colours (#FF6600), and byte-level data.

Each binary digit represents a power of 2, starting from the right. For 1011: (1×8) + (0×4) + (1×2) + (1×1) = 11. The tool does this instantly for any number.

Octal was historically used in older computing systems. Today it's most commonly seen in Unix/Linux file permissions (e.g., chmod 755 means rwxr-xr-x). Each octal digit represents exactly 3 binary bits.

JavaScript uses 64-bit floating-point numbers (IEEE 754), which means integers are exact up to 2^53 − 1 (about 9 quadrillion). Beyond that, precision may be lost. For very large numbers, use a dedicated big-integer library.