Elsevier Pathology

Clinical Pathology: General Principles, Lab Management, Clinical Chemistry, Clinical Pathology, Hematology & Coagulation

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• Information is stored on computers in digital form (i.e., 0 or 1). Binary digits (bits) are the smallest unit of measurement of computer storage; the bit can store either a 0 or 1.

• A byte consists of 8 bits and can therefore produce one of 256 (i.e., 28) combinations of 0s and 1s.

• Two hundred fifty-six characters, numbers, or special characters can be assigned a unique binary number, which is called “binary code.” It takes 1 byte of storage to store one character in an 8-bit (1-byte) binary code.

• Examples:

1011 0000 may represent “A.”

1011 0010 may represent “B.”

• Standardized binary codes consisting of different number of bits (e.g., 7 or 8) can encode a different number of characters. For example, ASCII is a binary code using 7 bits to produce 128 unique number combinations. UTF-32 is a 32-bit (4-byte) binary code and requires 4 bytes to store one character.



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