Kilobytes to Bits (kB to bit)
1 kilobyte equals 8,000 bits exactly.
How to convert kilobytes to bits
To convert kilobytes to bits, multiply the number of kilobytes by 8,000. This factor is exact. To go the other way, multiply bits by 0.000125.
bits = kilobytes × 8,000
Example: 10 kilobytes = 80,000 bits.
Decimal prefixes (kB, MB, GB) are powers of 1,000; binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) are powers of 1,024. Storage makers use decimal; Windows reports binary but labels it GB.
About these units
Kilobyte (kB)
1,000 bytes in the SI (decimal) definition. Older software and Windows sometimes use KB to mean 1,024 bytes; see kibibyte.
Few units have had two meanings for so long. By the mid-1960s most computers used binary addressing, so memory sizes came in powers of two and engineers borrowed kilo to mean 1,024. IBM documentation for the System/360 in 1964 used an uppercase K for 1,024. Hard disk makers took a different path from the start. The IEC later settled the question: kilobyte, symbol kB, means 1,000 bytes, and 1,024 bytes is a kibibyte.
Floppy disks show the muddle. The Shugart SA-400 of 1976 held 109,375 bytes unformatted and was advertised as 110 Kbyte, the decimal way, while a 1978 Tandon double-density disk held 368,640 bytes, or 360 times 1,024, and was sold as 360 KB. Windows still divides by 1,024, so a 65,536-byte file appears as 64 KB there, while Mac OS X Snow Leopard and later would call it 66 kB. A kilobyte is also tiny: Edgar Allan Poe's The Cask of Amontillado is 12,843 bytes.
1 kilobyte = 1,000 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Kilobyte; Wikipedia: Binary prefix; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Bit (bit)
The smallest unit of digital information: a single 0 or 1. Eight bits make a byte.
Bit is short for binary digit, and the word was coined by John W. Tukey. He shortened the phrase in a Bell Labs memo dated 9 January 1947. Claude Shannon first used it in print in his 1948 paper A Mathematical Theory of Communication and credited Tukey with the word. The idea predates the name: Ralph Hartley proposed a logarithmic measure of information in 1928, and punched cards, invented by Basile Bouchon and Jean-Baptiste Falcon in 1732 and developed by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, already stored one bit per hole position.
A bit holds one of two values, written 0 or 1, and everything digital is built from them. Eight bits make a byte, so a bit is one eighth of a byte. Symbols for the unit are not settled: the IEC standard uses bit, while IEEE 1541-2002 recommends a lowercase b, with uppercase B reserved for the byte. The difference matters because internet speeds and file sizes are quoted in different units.
1 bit = 0.125 bytes (exactly).
Sources: Wikipedia: Bit; NIST: Prefixes for binary multiples
Related conversions
- Bits to kilobytes (reverse)
- Kilobytes to bytes
- Kilobytes to megabytes
- Kilobytes to gigabytes
- Kilobytes to terabytes
- Kilobytes to petabytes
- Kilobytes to kibibytes
- Kilobytes to mebibytes
- Kilobytes to gibibytes
- Kilobytes to tebibytes
- Kilobytes to kilobits
- Kilobytes to megabits
- Kilobytes to gigabits
- Bytes to bits
- Megabytes to bits
- Gigabytes to bits
- Terabytes to bits
- Petabytes to bits
- Kibibytes to bits
- Mebibytes to bits
- Gibibytes to bits
- Tebibytes to bits
- Kilobits to bits
- Megabits to bits
- Gigabits to bits
See all digital storage units.