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  1. Husky71

    Kelvin bits per second?

    My upload speed test result was reported with units of Kbps. I know the intent was to state the speed in kilo bits per second, but per SI unit rules a capital K is the unit for temperature, kelvin. The ten to the third power multiplier prefix kilo is abbreviated using a lower case k. See http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/ And to be strictly correct, the internationally standardized abbreviation for binary digit is bit. International standards bodies do not recognize b as a further abbreviation for bit. Interesting factoid, John Tukey, who worked at Bell Labs, first suggested the word bit as an abbreviation for binary digit. Claude Shannon first used the word in publication in his paper A Mathematical Theory of Communications. And to go one step further, SI unit usage and grammar rules frown on the use of p to represent per in a unit formulation. So strictly the unit would properly be kbit/s or kbit * s^-1
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