Addressing and alignment of computer memory on binary architectures is happening on binary boundaries due to arithmetic properties. You can not buy a 1,000,000,

Addressing and alignment of computer memory on binary architectures is happening on binary boundaries due to arithmetic properties. You can not buy a 1,000,000,000 bytes RAM chip for that reason. Magnetic and paper tape, drums, delay lines and hard disks are (imperfect) hacks to have more memory due to cost of RAM.