by John Merchant
It’s an odd thing that a single syllable, three letter word like “bit” could have so many meanings. To sample just a few definitions: A small piece; The past tense of bite; Part of a horse’s bridle: An entertainment routine given regularly by a performer; an act; An amount equal to one eighth of a US dollar: two bits; A one-time, UK coin: a threepenny bit.
And there’s more: The sharp part of a tool, such as the cutting edge of a knife or ax; A pointed tool for drilling and boring that is secured in a brace, or drill press; The part of a key that enters the lock and engages the bolt and tumblers. OK, enough already!
But the bit that goes further than any of the others is in the binary code used for all digital language and mathematical expressions. This bit can either be a 0 or a 1. Combinations of 0 and 1 make up a byte and can used to codify any word in any language. Not only that, but properly arranged on a surface plane, the bits can form an image called a bitmap.
This could be a photograph of the family pooch, an image of an ancient document such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, or a manufacturing blueprint. In satellite imaging and astronomy, often the original pictures are difficult to interpret, either because the light is unfavorable or because of atmospheric conditions.
Because the digital image is made up bytes, a smart computer can be instructed to examine each byte in the image for illogical sequences of bits, and rearrange them logically. The result is an image with improved definition. Similar, but less sophisticated technology is used by your computer photo adjustment software when you instruct it to sharpen a picture or change the exposure, or remove “red eyes” caused by flash.
In my grade school English classes, when writing essays we were penalized for using for using words like “nice,” “thing” and poor old “bit.” Well “thing” and “nice” are still waiting in the wings, but “bit” has come a long way since then.
© John Merchant 2010
This entry was posted by John Merchant on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 12:00 am and is filed under Theme of the Month.
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An important message for you: 0100001001100101001000000111001101110101011100100110010100100000011101000110111100100000011001010110000101110100001000000111100101101111011101010111001000100000011000100110000101100011011011110110111000101110
T’was a nice thing you did – telling us about the word ‘bit’. Now, of course add bit to computerspeak of Century 21..
Good grief Heather … your comment’s a bit over the top, isn’t it?
Consumers know that there are 8 of them in a single byte but how many are there on a certain yellow polka-dot bikini?
Thanks for taking the bait folks. John
Well, as a sometimes bit player, I do indeed enjoy this article. You might also include an acronym: BIT…for Because It’s True!
Colin