Possibly, the origins of the practice predates computers entirely, and goes back to their predecessors in business data processing, unit record equipment. As su

Possibly, the origins of the practice predates computers entirely, and goes back to their predecessors in business data processing, unit record equipment. As such, it may be like many other traditions - made complete sense when it was invented, yet people still clung to it long after it ceased to do so. Unit record equipment generally didn’t use binary integers, instead using BCD; and most early business-oriented computers followed their example. Binary integers were mainly found on scientific machines (along with floating point), until the mid-1960s, when the hard division between business computing and scientific computing faded away, and general purpose architectures, equally capable of commerce and science, began to flourish.