On Thursday, 8 September 2022 at 13:28:13 -0400, Dan Halbert wrote: > > I also looked in the Oxford English Dictionary for etymology. It has: > > *d.* /Computing/. A consecutive string of bits (now typically 16, > 32, or 64, but formerly fewer) that can be transferred and stored as > a unit./machine word/: see /machine word/ n. at machine n. Compounds > 2 . > > 1946 H. H. Goldstine & J. Von Neumann in J. von Neumann /Coll. Wks./ > (1963) V. 28   In ‘writing’ a word into the memory, it is similarly > not only the time effectively consumed in ‘writing’ which matters, > but also the time needed to ‘find’ the specified location in the memory. Since we're searching the OED, there are a couple of others. The /machine word/ mentioned above has: machine word n. Computing: a word of the length appropriate for a particular fixed word-length computer. 1954 Computers & Automation Dec. 16/1 Machine word, a unit of information of a standard number of characters, which a machine regularly handles in each register. This makes the meaning clearer, I think, though it doesn't seem to be a change in meaning. On Thursday, 8 September 2022 at 17:16:35 -0400, Noel Chiappa wrote: > > Looking a little further, Turing's ACE Report, from 1946, uses the > term (section 4, pg. 25; "minor cycle, or word"). My copy, the one > edited by Carpenter and Doran, has a note #1 by them, "Turing seems > to be the first user of 'word' with this meaning." I have Brian's > email, I can ask him how they came to that determination, if you'd > like. I don't see that this is the same meaning. Do you? "Minor cycle" suggests timing parameters. But it would be interesting to know whether this document pre- or postdates Goldstine and von Neumann. And since we were also talking about bits, it seems that OED has its own entry, bit, n.4: A unit of information derived from a choice between two equally probable alternatives or ‘events’; such a unit stored electronically in a computer. 1948 C. E. Shannon in Bell Syst. Techn. Jrnl. July 380 The choice of a logarithmic base corresponds to the choice of a unit for measuring information. If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits, a word suggested by J. W. Tukey. Greg -- Sent from my desktop computer. Finger grog@lemis.com for PGP public key. See complete headers for address and phone numbers. This message is digitally signed. If your Microsoft mail program reports problems, please read http://lemis.com/broken-MUA.php