File talk:Project Whirlwind - core memory, circa 1951 - detail 1.JPG

Standard computer science nomenclature (as I learned it while earning a CS degree in the 1980's) would have Kb mean 1024 bits, were as kb would mean 1000 bits as k is the SI prefix for 1000. So the Whirlwind memory unit must have had 2048 bits. Whirlwind used a 16 bit word, 11 for address and 5 for instruction, so this device held 128 words if used as a discrete unit, or more likely as one bit of the word along with 15 other units in parallel since the computer was built with all 2048 words it was capable of addressing: 2¹¹ = 2048