The Big-Byte Theory

The origin of the binary universe

The origin of the byte, as told by an engineer.

A bit is a single one or zero ... like the two sides of a penny ... or ... I like to think of it as a light switch ... either on or off. Now, if you put a bank of 8 of these light switches together, you get a byte. A byte is the same as a character. When you type the letters on the keyboard, each is represented in the computer by one specific byte. I have read that the term comes from a contraction of "by eight" ... just rumour.

So far,

• 1 byte = 8 bits

Now, if you write a bunch of characters (numbers, letters, symbols, spaces, etc.) together ... they soon add up and saying you have a file with 12345 bytes or 12345678 bytes gets cumbersom ... so we engineers invented the term KB for kilobytes. Once you put 1024 bytes together, you get one KB. The reason for the number 1024 is that it is a power of 2. I.e. 2^2=4 (2*2=4), 2^3=8 (2*2*2=8), 2^4=16 (2*2*2*2=16), 2^5=32 (2*2*2*2*2=32) and so on ... 2^8=256 ... and 2^10=1024 ... the magic number for Kilobytes.

Now we have,

• 1 byte = 8 bits
• 1 KB (kilobyte or kb or K) = 1024 bytes

After a while, the file sizes got to be real big and saying 123456789 bytes, or even 12056.3 KB was getting cumbersom ... so it was time to get back to the drawing board and invent a new number. Since KB worked so well, the engineers decided to extend the thought and made a kilo of kilobytes equal one megabyte ... thus 1024 KB = 1MB ... 1 K KB. Therefore, a megabyte is larger than a KB by the same factor as a KB is bigger than a byte.

(Ignore the following if it confuses you ...
1MB = 1024 * 1 KB = 1024 * 1024 bytes = 1048576 bytes and thus
1MB > 1 million bytes.)

Now we have,

• 1 byte = 8 bits
• 1 KB (kilobyte or kb or K) = 1024 bytes
• 1 MB (mega byte or M) = 1024 KB = 1048576 bytes

Then came the BIG operating systems that gobbled up hard drives like they were going out of style ... another name was needed and was invented ... the giga byte (GB) was born. A GB is (you guessed it) 1024 MB. By the same logic, 1GB = 1 K MB = 1 M KB = 1048576 KB = 1073741824 bytes and thus 1 GB > 1 billion bytes

Now we have,

• 1 byte = 8 bits
• 1 KB (kilobyte or kb or K) = 1024 bytes
• 1 MB (megabyte or M) = 1024 KB = 1048576 bytes
• 1 GB (gigabyte or G) = 1024 MB = 1 M KB = 1073741824 bytes

Not to be out done, databases got into the act and massed up tons of data and called them data warehouses ... so the GB was too small and the terabyte was invented ... yes, it is 1024 GB or 1099511627776 bytes ... say that with a mouth of spaghetti!

At last we have,

• 1 byte = 8 bits
• 1 KB (kilobyte or kb or K) = 1024 bytes
• 1 MB (megabyte or M) = 1024 KB = 1048576 bytes
• 1 GB (gigabyte or G) = 1024 MB = 1 M KB = 1073741824 bytes
• 1 TB (terabyte or T) = 1024 GB = 1 M MB = 1099511627776 bytes

I am sure this will go on forever!

I hope this helps.

Copyright © 1998 Sam Rasins