A bit is the smallest unit of information that can be stored or manipulated on a computer; it consists of either zero or one. (View Highlight)
We can also call a bit a binary digit, especially when working with the 0 or 1 values. (View Highlight)
A bit is not just the smallest unit of information, but for sake of discussion it can be said that a bit is also the largest unit of information a computer can manipulate. (View Highlight)
The bits are bunched together so the computer uses several bits at the same time, such as for calculating numbers. When a “bunch” means eight bits then it is called a byte. (View Highlight)
A byte also happens to be how many bits are needed to represent letters of the alphabet and other characters. For example, the letter “A” would be 01000001; my initials “KJW” would be 010010110100101001010111. (View Highlight)
It so happens that there are only 16 different ways to write 0’s and 1’s four times. So something called hexadecimal code can be used to make the numbers shorter by translating each nibble (or half-a-byte) (View Highlight)
Binary: 0000 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 Hexadecimal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F Decimal: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 (View Highlight)