kilobyte

Etymology

Coined in the 1960s, from kilo- (“thousand”) + byte.

noun

1. (computing, especially networking) One thousand (10³, or 1,000) bytes.
   The data word processor 606 handles the in-flow and out-flow of byte-oriented input/output data and interleaved signals at a rate of, for example, 500 kilobytes per second. Instruction processing rates of four to eight per microsecond are required for such a data flow. 1969, Harold R. Dell, HIGH-DENSITY PERMANENT DATA STORAGE AND RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, US Patent 3638185
2. (computing, informal, especially RAM) a kibibyte.
   It is assumed herein that each block includes 32 bytes, each sector includes 1 kilobyte, the buffer memory 116 includes 4 kilobytes, and read data is represented by one double word or 64 bits, as one word in this case consists of 32 bits. 1969, Hisashi Horikoshi, MEMORY CONTROL SYSTEM, US Patent 3618041