Kilobyte (KB)
The kilobyte, symbolized as KB, represents 1,000 bytes in the decimal system (SI), although in computing, it is commonly approximated as 1,024 bytes. The unit emerged in the 1960s as computer memory and storage expanded and was used for measuring small file sizes, such as text documents and early software. The kilobyte reflects the practical intersection of metric and binary measurements, which led to the introduction of binary-specific units, such as the kibibyte. Kilobytes are still used in some legacy systems and file specifications.
Gigabyte (GB)
The gigabyte, symbol GB, represents 1,000,000,000 bytes in decimal, though in binary it is often approximated as 1,073,741,824 bytes (1,024 MiB). The unit was introduced in the 1980s as personal computers and hard drives increased capacity. Gigabytes measure larger data volumes, including software, multimedia, and storage devices, and became the standard for consumer storage, networking, and cloud computing as a scale between megabytes and terabytes.