Chapter 744: Binary
The car stopped in front of the administrative building of the tractor factory.
Professor Fessenden didn't even have time to unpack his luggage before Laurent informed him:
"General Charles is waiting for you in the third-floor conference room."
Fessenden frowned.
"Conference room?
Is this going to be a meeting?"
…
On the third floor, Charles was already chatting with Lieutenant Painvin over coffee.
Pétain had acted fast.
Within two days, Painvin had been successfully transferred from the Cipher Bureau.
Pétain had been clever—he never named names.
If he had explicitly asked for "Lieutenant Painvin," it would've raised alarms in Parliament:
"How do you know that name unless you've been in contact with the Cipher Bureau?"
A deeper investigation might have traced the request back to Charles.
Instead, Pétain filed a request for ten codebreakers to form a frontline signal team.
Because of his recent success at Verdun—and the fact that he was seen as a counterweight to Charles—the government quickly approved his request.
Then all he had to do was reject any group that didn't include Painvin, citing vague excuses.
After a couple of rounds, Painvin finally appeared—seemingly by "coincidence."
"Do you like mathematics, Lieutenant?" Charles asked.
"Yes, General," Painvin answered, sitting upright.
"If I didn't, working with codes would be a nightmare."
"Naturally." Charles nodded with a smile.
Codebreaking was a world of dry digits and letters. Without passion, no one could endure it for long.
Noticing how tense Painvin looked, Charles said:
"If you were a soldier, I'd expect you to stand at attention and salute."
"But you're not. Here, you're more of a researcher."
"So don't worry about military formality—understood?"
Painvin looked confused.
"Researcher?"
Wasn't he here to break enemy codes?
Since when was that considered scientific research?
Charles chuckled.
"Decrypting enemy messages is of limited use to me, Lieutenant.
If I already outmatch the enemy in tactics, equipment, and intelligence gathering, then I don't even need to read their messages."
Painvin was startled.
It was true.
Charles had cutting-edge tactics, invented a range of advanced weaponry, and used air superiority to gather real-time battlefield intel.
He had won time and again—without ever needing decrypted enemy codes.
Yes, there were moments of danger.
But they were rare.
"Then why…?" Painvin hesitated.
Why go through so much trouble to extract him from the Cipher Bureau?
"One moment, Lieutenant." Charles pulled out his pocket watch.
"There's someone I'd like you to meet. He might become your research partner."
Just then, the door swung open.
Fessenden entered, still dusty from travel.
Charles beamed.
"There he is!"
He shook hands with Fessenden, then introduced both men:
"Professor Fessenden—radio specialist and physicist. His creation, the 'echo locator,' is a masterpiece."
"Lieutenant Painvin—cipher analyst, top-tier talent currently under strict classification."
Painvin had heard of Fessenden.
Fessenden hadn't heard of Painvin.
Both were puzzled.
What could a radio physicist and a codebreaker possibly work on together?
Was one supposed to receive the signal while the other decrypted it?
Charles didn't rush to explain.
He motioned for them to sit.
After a secretary served coffee to Fessenden, Charles asked:
"Gentlemen, I've been pondering a possibility—could we use machines to break codes?"
"Machines?"
Both Fessenden and Painvin gave him surprised looks.
"We already use machines, General," Painvin said.
"For instance, decoding machines…"
"No. This is different." Charles cut him off.
He rephrased:
"You both know about binary, right?"
"Of course." Fessenden nodded.
"Leibniz's invention—for simplifying complex logic problems into basic yes/no answers."
"I've even studied it," Painvin added.
"I once tried applying it to codebreaking."
(Image: German mathematician Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, inventor of binary in 1679, aiming to reduce complex problems to logical 'yes' or 'no'—a concept that would become the foundation of modern computing.)
"Excellent," Charles smiled.
"Then you know binary can solve logic problems."
"So why not build machines that use it?"
"Suppose one component carries current—call it '1'.
And another doesn't—'0'.
Can't we create combinations of components that produce answers through binary logic?"
The two men were stunned.
After a long pause, Painvin asked, grasping the idea more quickly:
"You mean… if we input data, the machine would compute the result automatically?"
"As in—do the whole calculation by itself?"
"Exactly." Charles nodded with approval.
Fessenden shook his head, clearly overwhelmed:
"That's impossible, General."
"Do you realize what that implies?"
"If a machine could do that… it would have something akin to human intelligence. That would be terrifying."
Charles gave Fessenden a thumbs-up.
"You see the future."
He didn't expect them to accept the idea immediately.
Even when Alan Turing first proposed it twenty years later, many thought he was insane.
But a few years after that, he built the first functioning computer to crack enemy codes.
(Image: Alan Turing, 1935, lying on grass when he first wondered whether machines could calculate like humans. In 1936, he published the concept of the "Turing Machine," but almost no one believed it.)
"The principle isn't complicated," Charles continued.
"We can wire circuits to perform logic operations."
"For example—if two components both carry current, they power a third. That's the AND operation."
"If either carries current, the third one activates. That's OR."
Painvin's eyes widened:
"And if one carries current, the other turns off—that's NOT logic."
"My God… this could actually work."
"This kind of logic already has theoretical foundations. I mean the rules of binary operations."
Fessenden still shook his head.
"This is madness, General. A waste of time. It's meaningless."
"Why not start small?" Charles said calmly.
"Let's build a machine that can add binary numbers."
Thank you for the support, friends. If you want to read more chapters in advance, go to my Patreon.
Read 30 Chapters In Advance: patreon.com/Franklin1