The origin of the word byte is very disputed: 

Some say that in the early days IBM taught that a series of bits transferred together (like so many yoked oxen) formed a Binary Yoked Transfer Element (BYTE). This is a rather comical origin and very improbable.

or

Another possible origin is that BYTE was used to stand for the acronym "Bit as Ynchronous Transmission E?????", which was related to width of the bus between the Stretch CPU and its CRT-memory. 

or

Werner Buchholz supposedly coined the term byte in 1956, during the beginnings of the IBM Stretch computer. He mutated the word "bite" to avoid confusion with "bit". In 1962, he described a byte as "a group of bits used to encode a character, or the number of bits transmitted in parallel to and from input-output units". 

Are you an expert in data types and structures? I should hope so. Finish your lesson in data with ASCII.

All material and images on these pages are copyright Joseph,Ed. This page was developed for the Thinkquest1999 competition.