Prepare ordered sterile Petri dishes with nutritious solution. Expose some to bacteria, forming bacterial cultures, but not others. Ones and zeroes. At first,

Prepare ordered sterile Petri dishes with nutritious solution. Expose some to bacteria, forming bacterial cultures, but not others. Ones and zeroes. At first, they will be almost impossible to distinguish (you cannot hurry much your culture medical exams even if willing to spend a lot, right?) After a while, the cultures become obvious. The timing is heavily dependant of the bacteria's life cycle, but I guess if you stricly control the number of individuals initially put into the dishes, and keep temperature and lighting optimal, you can predict the time-to-observability to around 40%?