A byte is a group of bits treated as a unit, often representing characters in ASCII code or other computer-related values. It typically consists of 8 bits. Werner Buchholz, an IBM scientist, introduced the term in 1956. To represent large numbers of bytes, prefixes are used, with each prefix denoting a power of two. For instance, a kilobyte (KB) is 1,024 bytes. Bytes are abbreviated with an uppercase “B” to distinguish them from bits, which use a lowercase “b.”