e-VIBES 'The magazine for Newspapers and Commercial Printers First and the Maiden issue dated January 2017 | Page 22

January 2017

e-VIBES

January 2017

BACK- TO-BASICS

If you understand the atom you know the entire cosmos. The fundamental and rudimentary elements and its related macro systems are similarly designed. E-VIBES intend to carry a series of articles explaining certain elementary building blocks, related to print technology, the understanding of which will make the totality of the related concepts and theories easy to grasp.

In this first issue let us understand‘ BITS and BYTES’ At the smallest scale in the computer, information is stored as bits and bytes.

Bits

Bit, like an atom, is the smallest unit of storage. In the digital script it is all 0 ' s and 1’ s, the elements of‘ Bits’. It means the Bit stores just a 0 or 1. It is the smallest building block of storage.
A bit is too small to be much used. Group 8 bits together to make 1 byte. The following distinct patterns can be made with 1, 2, or 3 bits.
Number of bits Distinct Patterns 1 0 1 2 00 01 10 11 3 000 001 010 011 100
101 110 111
You may note that 3-bits has twice as many patterns as 2-bits.
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