9 Sep
2022
9 Sep
'22
6 a.m.
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 <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/view/Entry/111850#eid38480019>.
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
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