Why is this important to know. The capacity of Hard Drives (physical storage) and RAM (Random Access Memory) are measured in Megabytes and Gigabytes. Understanding the following might make the big picture a little clearer.

One condition of on or off (1 or 0) represents one bit. Eight bits together are equal to one byte. The bits position within the byte determines its value.

Positional Value Chart-

128|64|32|16|8|4|2|1

8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

00010010

Above we have a 1 in the fifth position from the right, as well as a 1 in the second position from the right.

If we reference the 'Positional Value chart we can see that the 5th position has a value of 16. Also the 2nd position has a value of two. We add all on bits (or 1's) and the answer is 18. Remember any 0's represent nothing and basically don't exist. The Value positional chart is just to help in visualization of this new concept. There actually is no such thing. The way the positions work is starting with the first bit from the right:

2 to the 0 power.

2 to the 1st power.

2 to the 2nd power.

2 to the 3rd power.

2 to the 4th power.

2 to the 5th power.

2 to the 6th power.

2 to the 7th power.

(Values are rounded below)

8 bits = 1 byte.

1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte

1000 kilobytes = 1 Megabyte

1000 Megabytes = 1 Gigabyte

That's as high as we need count for now.