In
the digital world, information is shared through software using multiple digital
patterns of ones and zeros. These digital patterns can represent alphanumeric
characters, mathematical operations, memory commands, or any other representative
data that when decoded by software, corresponds to understandable information based
on an agreed upon model of the digital patterns and data manipulation methods. This
is all well and good for applications of math calculation, word processing,
database entry, and other symbol based system uses, however, one can ask: how
does one get real world physical data into a format of digital patterns that
can be used by computers to measure, display, calculate upon, and manipulate the
data?
