The unit of information; the amount of information obtained by
asking a yes-or-no question; a computational quantity that can
take on one of two values, such as false and true or 0 and 1;
the smallest unit of storage - sufficient to hold one bit.
A bit is said to be "set" if its value is true or 1, and
"reset" or "clear" if its value is false or 0. One speaks of
setting and clearing bits. To
toggle or "invert" a bit is
to change it, either from 0 to 1 or from 1 to 0.
The term "bit" first appeared in print in the computer-science
sense in 1949, and seems to have been coined by the eminent
statistician,
John Tukey. Tukey records that it evolved
over a lunch table as a handier alternative to "bigit" or
"binit".
(2002-01-22)