For those who want to look into this in more depth, Conservative Logic by Fredkin and Toffoli [1] is a foundational paper exploring in detail how the principle

For those who want to look into this in more depth, Conservative Logic by Fredkin and Toffoli [1] is a foundational paper exploring in detail how the principle of reversible computing impacts the underlying logic used for computation down to the logic gates. It is very readable. [Edit: the video recommended by gbrown_ elsewhere in this thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26295043 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26295043) refers to this paper and also shows how it is possible to move beyond the constraints introduced in it.] [1] (PDF) https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos576/papers/fredkin_toffoli82.pdf https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall06/cos576/p...