3 ms·
I'm asking about the original thinking, not about later backward compatibility.
by DougMerritt 4y ago
I'm asking about the original thinking, not about later backward compatibility.
- greenyoda 4y agoThe Wikipedia article cited above has some practical reasons: > Early binary computers aimed at the same market therefore often used a 36-bit word length. This was long enough to represent positive and negative integers to an accuracy of ten decimal digits (35 bits would have been the minimum). It also allowed the storage of six alphanumeric characters encoded in a six-bit character code.
- DougMerritt 4y agoCoincidentally I commented on this above at the same time you were posting -- thanks.