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As originally defined by IBM on the Stretch project one byte is a group of bits of whatever length was needed to store one character of the current character set, this was originally specified to be anything from 4 to 16 bits, but was reduced in the actual machine to 4 to 8 bits due to implementation issues.

When IBM designed the System/360 they decided to fix the byte at 8 bits to save costs and hardware.

When byte mode was added by Univac to the 1100 series, they defined the byte at 9 bits because they had a 36 bit word.

Generally now the industry considers a byte to be 8 bits.

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14y ago

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