A byte is a unit of digital information that usually consists of eight bits. It is the basic building block for storing data in computers.
Coined in the late 1950s by computer scientists, probably as a playful alteration of 'bite' to mean a small chunk of data. The spelling was changed to 'byte' to avoid confusion with 'bit.' It quickly became standard in computing as hardware designers settled on eight bits per byte.
Every photo, song, or message on your device is ultimately just a giant pile of bytes. A single byte can store a number from 0 to 255, which is why early character sets like ASCII fit neatly into one byte. The word is young compared to most English words—it’s younger than many of your grandparents.
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