Binary Search

John Mauchly, 1946

Described by John Mauchly in 1946 during the Moore School Lectures, binary search is a fundamental algorithm that finds a target in a sorted array by comparing the middle element and eliminating half the remaining candidates each step. With O(log n) time complexity, it is vastly faster than linear search for large datasets. The visualization shows a row of sorted cells, with the active search range in teal, the current midpoint in gold, eliminated portions faded out, and the found target in coral.