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January 2003

Understanding bits and bytes

With 8 bits, we have 28= 256 possibilities (each bit can be zero or one, and the possibilities multiply together). We call 8 bits a byte. The very common ASCII system makes each letter of the alphabet, both capital and small (plus punctuation and some other symbols) correspond to a number from 0 to 255 (for example a=97, b= 98 and so on), so one letter can be expressed with one byte.

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Editorial

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