That means this article could have 1048576 characters in a one-megabyte computer. Naturally, you d need a good chunk of those bytes for the program, variables, graphics, etc. Well that s because first I wanted you to understand fully what a byte is one character of memory. 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.