byte /bi:t/ n.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes have become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz
in 1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally
it was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used
6-bit chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late 1956,
and this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360.
The word was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally
misspelled as bit. See also nybble
I saved this page with the file name "byte1.htm". There is no file with the name "index.htm" in this subdirectory. Users may browse through this directory to see what files you have. Sometime you might want to do this on purpose.
Copy some text from either a document you have or something that you find on the web. Paste it into your web page. Use either the ctrl-C / ctrl-V method or use the mouse right click pop up menu method. This is how I arrived at the text that you see below.
byte /bi:t/ n.
[techspeak] A unit of memory or data equal to the amount used to represent one character; on modern architectures this is usually 8 bits, but may be 9 on 36-bit machines. Some older architectures used `byte' for quantities of 6 or 7 bits, and the PDP-10 supported `bytes' that were actually bitfields of 1 to 36 bits! These usages are now obsolete, and even 9-bit bytes have become rare in the general trend toward power-of-2 word sizes.
Historical note: The term was coined by Werner Buchholz in
1956 during the early design phase for the IBM Stretch computer; originally
it was described as 1 to 6 bits (typical I/O equipment of the period used 6-bit
chunks of information). The move to an 8-bit byte happened in late 1956, and
this size was later adopted and promulgated as a standard by the System/360.
The word was coined by mutating the word `bite' so it would not be accidentally
misspelled as bit. See also nybble