Meaning Behind The Power Symbol Is Igniting People’s Brains
There are all kinds of signals that guide our everyday lives. At junctions, a red light means stop and a green light means go. Parking lots marked by a person in a wheelchair indicate that they are for disabled drivers only. A skull and crossbones warn you of a poisonous substance.
And then there’s the power symbol, universally characterized by a broken circle with a line down the middle. Most people understand what it is without knowing what it means, and that’s okay. For those whose curiosity has been piqued, scroll down to find out more.
For safety reasons, it was important for there to be a standardized icon signifying an On/Off function. Simply marking buttons as ‘On/Off’ wouldn’t suffice, as not everyone can read English. As such, the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) was tasked with designing a symbol that could be universally understood, according to Itechtics.
The IEC then decided to use the binary number system, a “language” more graspable by all. It assigned ‘I’ to denote something being switched on, and ‘O’ to represent a device between toggled off.
‘I’ is the character for the binary one, and ‘O’ is the marker for the binary zero.
One bonus to these semantics is that, even if you flip a button upside-down, you can still tell which side represents power-on or power-off.
Many parts of the world have their light switches with the ‘On’ setting located below and the ‘Off’ button at the top. In the US, this is usually reversed—‘On’ is on top, and ‘Off’ is at the bottom. But it doesn’t matter, since the symbols on the buttons are the same.
Interestingly, when the ‘I’ and ‘O’ first merged as one, the resulting symbol didn’t represent an all-encompassing On/Off functionality. It initially denoted the ‘Sleep’ mode, pointing to the happy medium between a gadget being switched on and off. However, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) stepped in and recognized it as the global On/Off icon, as well as introduced a crescent moon to mean the ‘Sleep’ state.
The meaning behind the power button was recently brought to the internet’s attention after comedian Bec Hill shared the revelation on Twitter.
I only recently discovered that the on/off symbol (pictured) represents a 1 and a 0 - as in, binary for on/off.
— Bec Hill (@bechillcomedian) January 30, 2023
Anyone got any other symbol revelations that blew their minds? pic.twitter.com/jAp3MWoB5f
It’s another tidbit that helps us appreciate everyday mundanities. In a similar vein, the Bluetooth symbol has some amusing ties to the Vikings.
Engineers Jim Kardach and Sven Mattisson looked to Harald “Bluetooth” Gormsson, the king of Denmark who ruled between 970 and 986, as a metaphor for wireless connection—during his reign, he helped unite Norway and Denmark. His nickname was coined from the fact that he had a dead, blue/gray tooth.
[via Itechtics, ScoopWhoop, Creative Bloq, images via various sources]
