If you can imagine a byte as an eight-slotted egg carton, the eggs in the slots would be the bits. You see bits aren t really memory. Bits are electronic switches that make up a byte. When I say switches, I really mean switch. These are circuits.
Bits are real, physical electronic things that get turned on and off.
Some people say that since these switches have two positions, on and off, that this is the reason we call the number system used by computers binary. This isn t the case. The binary system is called that because it uses powers of two, which we ll get into later. When bits are on, we say they hold a 1 and when they are off, we say they hold a 0. Actually they just hold a few gazillion electrons.