How come the number 255 is the maximum number used in computers & probably even more
In: 2
Computers give a certain amount of space for each number. Sort of how if you only had a limited amount of space on a note card, you might limit 2 digits for a number. With this note card, you could write any number from 00 to 99 with that rule, but if you wanted to write a bigger number you’d need to change your rules to allow more digits, which is how we get 100 to 999 for example.
Computers use ‘bits’ to physically store numbers instead of space on a note card. A bit is something that can be on, or off. 1, or 0. This is combined with computers using binary, which has 1 as the highest number in a digit instead of 9. Now the computer scientists needed a rule to say how much size each number was allowed to use on the disc, and they decided 8 bits was a good starting point that they named a byte. That means that the largest number that can be stored in a byte is 11111111, which is 255 in base 10. If they want to store a larger number, they tell the computer that the rules are different with this number and use more bits/bytes to store it. This is where “64 bit computers” get their name.
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