Discussion
The term ‘bit’ is a contraction of
Answer: A
Correct answer: binary digit
Bit is a contraction of binary digit. The word was coined by John Tukey in 1947 and popularised by Claude Shannon in his 1948 paper founding information theory. A bit is the smallest unit of information: it distinguishes between exactly two possibilities, and in a circuit it is a single high or low voltage. The units built on it are worth keeping straight. Four bits make a nibble, which corresponds to one hexadecimal digit. Eight bits make a byte, giving 256 values. A word is whatever width the processor handles naturally - 32 or 64 bits on modern machines - so it is architecture-dependent rather than fixed. A distinction that causes constant confusion in practice: network speeds are quoted in bits per second and file sizes in bytes, and the abbreviations differ only in case - Mb for megabit, MB for megabyte. A 100 Mbps link therefore transfers about 12.5 MB per second.
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