Turbo C on MS-DOS for one. In fact 16-bit int was the norm on that platform, because the architecture didn't have 32-bit general purpose registers. In the C89

Turbo C on MS-DOS for one. In fact 16-bit int was the norm on that platform, because the architecture didn't have 32-bit general purpose registers. In the C89 days, you'd use 'short' in aggregates (structs and array) for values you knew wouldn't exceed 16 bits so didn't want to potentially waste space; 'long' in situations where you knew 16 bits wouldn't be enough; and 'int' the rest of the time (where 16 bits was enough, and there weren't any storage benefits to outweigh the performance benefit of using the native word size).