All data in a computer is converted and stored in Binary fashion. Binary is a base-2 number system made up of only zero (0) and one (1). Each zero or one is stored as a Bit – a binary digit. These bits are combined into groups of eight which are called Bytes. A byte is the smallest addressable unit of memory in a computer. These bytes can be used to represent all letters, numbers, etc. within the computer. This is done through a coding system called ASCII – American Standard Code for Information Interchange. In ASCII each character is represented by a specific combination of 8 bits (1 byte). Examples of the ASCII code are found on page 893 of your textbook.
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