Bits and Byets

A computer stores data in units called bits and bytes. Computer chips called integrated circuits have one of two states, off or on. Therefore, a system was developed that used only two numbers, 0 and 1. Zero representing off and 1 representing on. You can think of this as a sort of light switch. Each switch is called a bit.
Bits are grouped together in sets of eight. Each set of eight bits is called a byte. Setting different combinations of those eight "on and off" combinations can be developed to stand for letters numbers, spaces, and symbols. For practical purposes, think of a byte as one character. When computers refer to memory or storage they refer to terms using the following forms of measurement.

8 bits = 1 byte
1024 bytes = 1 Kilobyte (K)
1024 Kilobytes = 1 Megabyte (MG)
1024 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte (GB)

Today's hard drives are usually two or more gigabytes of memory and a floppy disk has 1.44 megabytes of memory.