Storing bitwise values in mysql

[Jeff Wolkove]

I have just read that MySQL can handle 64-bit logical
operations on a bigint field. I would like to have some
suggestions on how to turn the bits on. Is there a handy
function that does this? Working with something like
(a | 1125899906842624) to switch on bit 50 is going to
be hard to work with. Perhaps MySQL has some internal
constants that I have not found yet.

Thank you