1. 2 COMPUTERS THE BINARY SYSTEM AND UNITS OF MEASURE The binary system Storing, processing and transmitting data through electronic devices is possible because of the binary system, but what exactly is it? As the word ‘binary’ suggests, only two digits, 0 (zero) and 1 (one), are combined to express a number in a binary system, while the common decimal system is built on the combinations of 10 possible digits (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9). The decimal system uses the power of 10, whereas the binary system uses the power of 2. Converting decimal numbers into binary ones Electronic devices can only understand the binary system, so it is necessary to convert decimal numbers (or instructions) into binary numbers. To perform such a conversion, we have to repeat the process of division by 2 till the quotient is 0 or less than 1. The binary number arises from the reading of the from the bottom to the top. Here is the conversion, for example, of the number 81: remainders Number 8110 = 10100012 Bits and bytes When working with any kind of processor, each digit (0 or 1) corresponds to a bit . Every of 8 bits is called a byte. In ASCII code (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) any character you type on your keyboard is interpreted by the computer as a byte. When writing, you can identify bits and bytes by their spelling: upper case “B” is used for bytes and lower case “b” for bits. Here is a table showing the most common multiples of bits. 1 string 1 MORE Some less common terms are nibble, which corresponds to 4 bits, and octet, which is a synonym of byte. 1 DO How do you translate the word string in the following expressions? 1. A ball of string; 2. Guitar strings. 1 Term Memory units Bit 1/8 (= 1 single binary digit) Byte 1 (= 8 bits) Kilobyte (KB) 1,024 bytes Megabyte (MB) 1,024 KB (about 1 million bytes) Gigabyte (GB) 1,024 MB (about 1 billion bytes) Terabyte (TB) 1,024 GB (about 1 trillion bytes) Petabyte (PB) 1,024 TB (about 10¹⁵ bytes) Exabyte (EB) 1,024 PB (about 10¹⁸ bytes) Zettabyte (ZB) 1,024 EB (about 10²¹ bytes) Yottabyte (YB) 1,024 ZB (about 10²⁴ bytes)