When you’re able to transfer medical X-rays online or receive a digital signal for your television (remember rabbit ear antennae? no, of course not...remember seeing pictures of rabbit ear antennae?), phone or music recording, you can thank analog-to-digital converters.
ADCs are used in electronic devices to convert analog data into a language computers can understand. Analog signals are continuous waves that can’t be read by computers, so ADCs change the analog signal into digital (binary) format. However it’s accomplished, it certainly makes life more convenient.
The ultimate analog signal? The sun shadowing a sun dial. The ultimate digital conversion of this? The U.S. military reporting of the time, digitally, to the zillionth of a second.
