Minecraft wiki entry for Logic_gates, associated text: What we have done is turn the first bit into a "negative sign" if it is on, but if you have been reading this you realize it is not that simple. Numbers that have a negative sign like this are commonly referred to as signed integers. Numbers like in a normal adder, where two's compliment is not taken into effect are called unsigned integers. Unsigned integers can go to a higher value, but cannot go below zero where as signed integers can only go half as high, but they can go equally as far below zero. This means that the two numbers have the same range, it is just in a different location like so (this is with an 8 bit number):