digital information

Hello. Some time ago I came across an article that mentioned that digital and binary ideas were furthered by someone who was looking down onto a ploughed field from a plane. The premise seemed to suggest that by seeing the coding produced by the plough moving in different directions they expanded the ideas about processing information digitally. I have since been trying to find out more about this person and those ideas and more specifically about the link between ploughing and digital date. Does anyone have any more ideas about this? or knows what I am talking about?