Why only 8 bits?

8 bits was an adequate number of bits to represent a printing character, in 1962, so ANSI chose that and IBM chose that too, with a different encoding, so it caught on.

Why are there only 8 bits?

Eight bits was the maximum word size capability of many computers which were widely used in the early 1970s up to the late 1980s. This was a hardware limitation of the microprocessor architecture technology and was the major bottleneck for software created for those computer systems.

Why is a byte 8 bits and not 7?

The byte was originally the smallest number of bits that could hold a single character (I assume standard ASCII). We still use ASCII standard, so 8 bits per character is still relevant.

Why 8 bits instead of 10?

Two factors were important: Having units which are powers of two (2, 4, 8, 16, 32 etc.) is more convenient when designing digital systems. 8-bit is enough to store a single character in the ASCII character set (with room to spare for extending the character set to support say Cyrillic).

Why there is 8 bits in a byte?

In the early days of computing, there was no bit-byte standard, and it was largely hardware dependent. 8 bits to a byte was the most common because computers operate in binary, so powers of 2 are really nice. 2³ =8 bits can represent 2⁸ =256 unique values, and this is the smallest power of 2 that is really useful.

Where did Bytes Come From? - Computerphile

Why is 8 bits 256 not 255?

A byte is a group of 8 bits. A bit is the most basic unit and can be either 1 or 0. A byte is not just 8 values between 0 and 1, but 256 (2⁸) different combinations (rather permutations) ranging from 00000000 via e.g. 01010101 to 11111111 . Thus, one byte can represent a decimal number between 0(00) and 255.

Why don't computers use base 10?

Many people think that we use base 10 because we have 10 fingers on which we can count. Computers, and other electronic devices, can only reliably use an electrical current, or the absence of a current, to count (like having two fingers), and so they tend to use base 2 (binary) internally.

Why is binary always 8-bit?

8 bits was convenient because it was big enough to hold ASCII and also the extended ASCII that many countries used before Unicode came along. Even with UNICODE, 8 bit is convenient with the UTF-8 encoding.

Why are computers base 8?

Octal was an ideal abbreviation of binary for these machines because their word size is divisible by three (each octal digit represents three binary digits). So two, four, eight or twelve digits could concisely display an entire machine word.

Why is 8-bit better?

8-Bit color is good as it delivers excellent color and tonal values per color channel in a JPEG image. It's more accurate to call it an 8-Bit per channel image as the three channels equates to 24-Bit. Keep in mind that 8-Bit color equates to 16.7 million colors.

Why did ASCII change from 7 bits to 8 bits?

ASCII was originally developed for basic computers and printers. It uses a 7-bit code to represent characters. As more computers began to work with 8-bit groups of data, ASCII was written as 8 bits. The most significant bit was sometimes used as a parity bit to perform a parity check (a form of error checking).

Why are bits 255?

A bit is a binary digit. So a byte can hold 2 (binary) ^ 8 numbers ranging from 0 to 2^8-1 = 255.

Why is 8-bit 256?

Since computers work with binary numbers, all powers of two are important. 8bit numbers are able to represent 256 (2^8) distinct values, enough for all characters of English and quite a few extra ones. That made the numbers 8 and 256 quite important.

Why is a byte not always 8 bits?

But the term byte actually refers to the smallest addressable amount of memory a processor can address. An 8 bit quantity is in no way an obligation. Some early computers had very different byte sizes. Common sizes range from 5 bits all the way to 18 bits.

Why are there 256 bits?

256 is 2 to the power of 8. A byte can have a value between 0 and 255; so there are 256 distinct byte values. Traditionally computer people use bytes as a smallest piece of memory. All this makes it culturally accepted to use 256 for no logical reason, but just because it has these features.

How did 8-bit start?

In the history of video games, the third generation of video game consoles, commonly referred to as the 8-bit era, began on July 15, 1983, with the Japanese release of two systems: Nintendo's Family Computer (commonly abbreviated to Famicom) and Sega's SG-1000.

Why does the 8-bit binary system only use 7 characters?

The reason the characters are encoded as 7-bit values is because early computers handled data in bytes — blocks of 8 bits. The extra, eighth bit was originally reserved for error checking. Computers can only process numbers, so text characters need to represented by numbers too.

Why do computers like multiples of 8?

To this day, the 8 bit “byte” is the basic unit of computer communication. So multiples of eight are used if more than 256 combinations are needed since hardware/software systems are made to work with groups of 8 bits.

Why don't computers use base 4?

Reason is computers operate on electricity which can be in only 2 states 0 (OFF) or 1 (ON). Hence, computers use binary numbers (base 2).

Can binary have 9 bits?

Unlike the decimal number system where we use the digits 0 to 9 to represent a number, in a binary system, we use only 2 digits that are 0 and 1 (bits).

Why doesn't ASCII use 8 bits?

The committee eventually decided on a 7-bit code for ASCII. 7 bits allow for 128 characters. While only American English characters and symbols were chosen for this encoding set, 7 bits meant minimized costs associated with transmitting this data (as opposed to say, 8 bits).

Why is 1 KB 1024 bytes?

The prefix "kilo" means 1,000. Because computers use binary, or base-2, numbering, a kilobyte is actually equal to 2^10, or 1,024, bytes. This is why there are 1,024 bytes in a kilobyte.

Do all countries use base 10?

Nearly all cultures today use the same decimal, or base-10, number system, which arranges the digits 0-9 into units, tens and hundreds, and so on.

Why did humans choose base 10?

The use of Base-10 goes all the way back to ancient civilizations. 10 was the best number to use as a base for counting, as humans have ten fingers. Counting using fingers has been a method of simplifying counting for thousands and thousands of years.

Why was base 10 chosen?

The base 10 system allows for simple explanations of hundred tens and units etc. Using a base two system such as the Arara tribe in the Amazon would get very repetitive and confusing rather quickly but on the other hand using a base 60 system it would take a long time until you exchange it for another to start again.