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About bytes
Posted By:Mohamedris On 6/8/2006

How Much Text is in a Kilobyte or Megabyte?

A bit is the most basic unit of information. At their most fundamental level, most modern computers operate on binary bits which mean that they can have two states, usually specified as a 0 or 1. Long strings of these bits can be used to represent most types of information including text, pictures and music.

 

Most modern computers are binary systems and therefore, they are particularly well suited to working with bits. Pure binary information, however, is of little use to humans. The binary number 11000101110 is equivalent to 1582; it is obvious that we are much more suited to working with digits and text instead of ones and zeros.

 

To help make computers more like our language-based way of thinking, groups of bits are joined into bytes. One byte is comprised of 8 bits. A set of 8 bits was chosen because this provides 256 total possibilities which is sufficient for specifying letters, numbers, spaces, punctuation and other extended characters. This very sentence, for example is composed of 125 bytes because there are 125 letters, digits, spaces and punctuation marks. Keep in mind that we are discussing pure text; some word processing programs, include other sorts of formatting data, and therefore the file sizes will be greater than the number of characters in the file.

 

It is estimated that a kilobyte can accommodate about 1/2 of a typewritten page. Therefore, one full page requires about 2 kilobytes. The chart below illustrates the number of bytes in common terms such as kilobyte and megabyte and how much text could be stored:

 

name

number of bytes

amount of text

kilobyte (kB)

210 or 1,024

1/2 page

megabyte (mB)

220 or 1,048,576

500 pages or 1 thick book

gigabyte (gB)

230 or 1,073,741,824

500,000 pages or 1,000 thick books

terabyte (tB)

240 or 1,099,511,627,776

1,000,000 thick books

petabyte

250 or 1,125,899,906,842,624

180 Libraries of Congress

exabyte

260 or 1,152,921,504,606,846,976

180 thousand Libraries of Congress

zettabyte

270 or 1,180,591,620,717,411,303,424

180 million Libraries of Congress

yottabyte

280 or 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176

180 billion Libraries of Congress

 

The Library of Congress in Washington D.C. is said to be the world's largest library with over 28 million volumes. The numbers listed in the chart above are based on the assumption that the average book has 200 pages.

 

Most Compact Discs (CD) can hold approximately 750 megabytes (mB) which is roughly equivalent to 375,000 pages of text! DVDs can store 4.7 gigabytes (gB) or 2.3 million pages. The next generation of optical media, Blu-Ray discs, can hold an astonishing 27 gigabytes or 13.5 million pages which is roughly equivalent to the text contained in 67,500 books!

 

Data Measurement Chart

Data Measurement

Size

Bit

Single Binary Digit (1 or 0)

Byte

8 bits

Kilobyte (KB)

1,024 Bytes

or

8192 bits

 

 

 

 

 

Megabyte (MB)

1,024 Kilobytes

or

1048576 Bytes

8388608 Bits

 

 

 

 

Gigabyte (GB)

1,024 Megabytes

or

1048576 KB

1073741824 Bytes

8589934592 Bits

 

 

 

Terabyte (TB)

1,024 Gigabytes

or

1048576 MB

1073741824 KB

1099511627776 Bytes

8796093022208 Bits

 

 

Petabyte (PB)

1,024 Terabytes

or

1048576 GB

1073741824 MB

1099511627776 KB

1125899906842624 Bytes

9007199254740992 Bits

 

Exabyte (EB)

1,024 Petabytes

or

1048576 TB

1073741824 GB

1099511627776 MB

1125899906842624 KB

11522921504606846976 Bytes

9223372036854775808 Bits




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