Digital Cash Escrow

Scott Brickner sjb at universe.digex.net
Sat Apr 13 00:15:34 PDT 1996


jim bell writes:
>At 09:17 AM 4/11/96 -0500, John Deters wrote:
>  Go dig up the manuals for a
>>UNIVAC 1100, Jim.  Why do you think the RFCs for IP specifically refer to
>>"octets" as opposed to "bytes"?  Because (they explain) "octet" is
>>unambiguous, which then infers a certain ambiguity to "byte", now, doesn't it?
>
>Wasn't the original development of the Internet done in the middle 1960's?  
>And thus, does its development pre-date the coinage of the term, "byte"?  
>
>If that's true, doesn't this answer your question?  The terminology used for 
>the definition of a standard often tends to be frozen in time.  Lacking the 
>term "byte" they used "octet."  The subsequent invention of the term "byte" 
>would not have displaced the original term, at least in Internet standards.

Well, the earliest RFC is dated 4/7/69.  That's not really "middle 1960's".
The term "byte" seems to date from the mid-to-late 1950's.  Try again.






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