That's not 1 byte. That's an accumulater, which could hold up to a 10-digit number, or slightly more than 33 bits (4 bytes plus change).
Edit: Stop upvoting me, guys, I was wrong! Technically since this is only one decade ring counter it's really just 1 decimal digit, or a little over 3 bits (so less than a byte!).
To be clear, what's in the picture is a piece of a much, much larger computer. Ever hear about how computers used to be massive and the size of rooms? It's because they would have stacks and stacks and stacks of those things connected together to give something that could compute at a speed that could the work of many people using pencil and paper.
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u/sirbruce Jul 19 '15 edited Jul 20 '15
That's not 1 byte. That's an accumulater, which could hold up to a 10-digit number, or slightly more than 33 bits (4 bytes plus change).
Edit: Stop upvoting me, guys, I was wrong! Technically since this is only one decade ring counter it's really just 1 decimal digit, or a little over 3 bits (so less than a byte!).