Why do we have 8 bits in a byte? Professor Brailsford on the origins of the humble byte.
(3 votes)
Where did Bytes Come From?
Why do we have 8 bits in a byte? Professor Brailsford on the origins of the humble byte.
Comments
(Old Spike)
So what is it in human language?
(Old Spike)
a bit is the smallest piece of memory, a binary value, 1 or 0
a 'byte' is a small group of bits
early on, companies fluffed around using 'words' which are like bytes but larger
IBM came up with an 8-bit byte & 4-byte word
everyone adopted that