Hardware collection devices organise data by digitising it. Digitising is the process of translating data into the binary digits (bits) that can be stored and processed by a computer.
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Text - All characters such as letters, numerals, punctuation keys, spaces and special symbols are converted into binary using a standard method of conversion such as ASCII or EBCDIC. These work by assigning each character with a decimal number and converting this number into binary code.
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Image - Images are divided into tiny dots called pixels. One or more bits are assigned to each pixel. The relationship between the image and the bits in memory is called bit-mapping. The number of bits assigned to each pixel depends on the number of tones and colours used. The quality of a digitised image is improved by increasing the number of pixels or increasing the tones and colour.
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Audio - Sound is digitised using a method called sampling. This involves taking a number of samples or ‘slices’ of the sound wave. This is called the sampling rate. Each sample is assigned a number of bits. This is called the sample size. Better quality sound is achieved by increasing the sampling rate and/or the sampling size.