From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@pdj2-ra.F-REMOTE.CWRU.Edu>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 21:28:27 +0800
To: Cypherpunks <cypherpunks@toad.com>
Subject: Re: questions about bits and bytes
In-Reply-To: <m0u736N-0008yBC@pacifier.com>
Message-ID: <m0u799t-0004LyC@pdj2-ra.F-REMOTE.CWRU.Edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


jim bell writes:

: >At 09:33 PM 4/8/96 -0400, Jack Mott wrote:
: . . . .
: >Also, there are machines (mostly old kinky ones) that use bytes of sizes
: >other than 8 bits.
: 
: No, Bill, a "byte" has ALWAYS been 8-bits.  One of the main reasons 
: the term "byte" was invented was because the term "word" (as in, "word 
: length") varied for different computers, especially in the 1960's. (In fact, 
: many computers of that era used word lengths other than 8, 16, 32, 64 bits, 
: as surprising as this may sound to the current crop of PC and Mac 
: afficionados.)  This made it inconvenient to talk about memory capacities 
: unless you were referring to the same machine.  The solution was to invent a 
: new term, "byte," which conviently had about the same size as an ASCII 
: character and was always 8 bits.

One trouble with this statement was that an ASCII character only has 7
bits.  Another is that when I snuck into the IBM Executive Computer
Concepts Course in the mid-sixties, we [a bunch of high-powered
executives and me] were told, as I recall, that originally the term byte
was used by some to represent 7 bits.  IBM took credit for standardizing
the term on 8 bits.

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
Internet:  junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu    junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu