How the computer interprets data

Computers can only understand numbers. They store and manipulate data in a digital form. The only two numbers most computers use are 1 and 0. These are BINARY DIGITS.

The word BIT stands for the smallest element in computer memory.

Bits are grouped together to make bytes and each keyboard character is represented by a byte. Computer memory and storage capacity are measured in bytes

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ASCII Code

As computers have to be able to interpret language and images as well as numbers the simplest way of doing this was to ensure that each keyboard character or picture inputed is converted to digital format. Keyboard characters are converted to digital format using an agreed code. One of the most used codes is called ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). The character A (65 in ASCII) becomes 01000001 in digital format.

Images are converted to digital format using the position of each point on the monitor. X is the co-ordinate starting on the extreme left of the screen, and Y is the co-ordinate starting at the top of the screen. Each point on a graphic image is a pixel.

To digitize sound, a device measures a sound wave's amplitude many times per second. These numeric values can then be recorded digitally.