Binary System: Definitions

The word bit is a contraction of "binary digit", which is a data type that can be either $0$ or $1$. It was coined by Professor John W. Tukey of Princeton University in 1946.

A byte is a fixed number of bits attached to one another. The most common byte size is $8$ bits, e.g., $01001110$, although $7$-bit bytes have certain meaningful applications in computing.

A word is a fixed number of bytes attached to one another. E.g., a WORD data type on Windows is of the size $16$-bits (= $2$ bytes), and a DWORD ("Double WORD") is $32$-bits (= $4$ bytes), twice as long as a WORD.

A nibble (sometimes called nybble or nyble) is $4$ bits long: it's a half of an $8$-bit byte.

Fun In-Class Activity: Assuming a byte is 8 bits long, how many bits long are (1) $64$ KB? (2) $16$ DWORDs? (3) 256 nibbles?