Definition of the word kilobit

The term "kilobit" originated in the 1950s during the early development of digital computing. At that time, data was transmitted over telecommunication lines using a protocol called binary code, which is made up of a sequence of 0s and 1s. To measure the amount of data being transmitted, engineers introduced a prefix system to denote multiples of 1024, which is the equivalent of 2^10 binary digits. The prefix "kilo" comes from the Greek word meaning "thousand", as in kilohertz (1000 hertz) or kilometer (1000 meters). Therefore, a kilobit is equal to 1024 bits or approximately 125 kilobytes (KB) in today's common use of the prefix "kilobyte" for larger units of data.