Byte, is the basic unit of information in computer storage and processing. A byte consists of 8 adjacent binary digits (bits), each consisting of a 0 or 1. (Originally, a byte was any string of more than one bit that made up a simple piece of information like a single character. Thus, for example, there were four- or six-bit bytes, but eventually, the standard settled on eight bits.) The string of bits making up a byte is processed as a unit by a computer; bytes are the minor operable storage units in computer technology. A byte can represent the equivalent of a single character, such as the letter B, a comma, or a percentage sign, or it can represent a number from 0 to 255. Because a byte contains so little information, computer hardware’s processing and storage capacities are usually given in gigabytes (GB; one billion bytes) and terabytes (TB; one trillion bytes). Because the byte had its roots in binary digits, initially, one kilobyte was not 1,000 bytes but 1,024 bytes (1,024 = 210), and thus one megabyte (MB) was 1,024 × 1,024 bytes, and so on. However, with some notable exceptions, such as the Microsoft Windows operating system, the computer industry has switched to decimal prefixes, in which prefixes denote a thousandfold increase in bytes.
