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