how many bytes did each character require for extended ascii characters
Extended ASCII Some multi-byte character encodings (character encodings that can handle more than 256 different characters) are also true extended ASCII. That means all ASCII characters are encoded with a single byte with the value that is used in ASCII to encode that character. They can be used in file formats where only ASCII bytes are used for keywords and file format syntax, while bytes 0x80-0xFF might be used for free text, including most programming languages, where language keywords, variable names, and function names must be in ASCII, but string constants and comments can use non-ASCII characters. This makes it much easier to introduce a multi-byte character set into existing systems that use extended ASCII.
Computer data storage A modern digital computer represents data using the binary numeral system. Text, numbers, pictures, audio, and nearly any other form of information can be converted into a string of bits, or binary digits, each of which has a value of 1 or 0. The most common unit of storage is the byte, equal to 8 bits. A piece of information can be handled by any computer or device whose storage space is large enough to accommodate the binary representation of the piece of information, or simply data. For example, the complete works of Shakespeare, about 1250 pages in print, can be stored in about five megabytes (40 million bits) with one byte per character.