I'm interested in the origin of the word byte. Although it is a ubiquitous word in computer science, yet it seems no one can point out its origin. (I've been searching the web for a long time, but without coming up with an authoritative answer.
Wikipedia says it's coined from bite, but to avoid mutation to bit, it's respelled to byte.
But why does Weiner Buchholz choose bite, not other words?
Best Answer
The term byte implies a chunk of something — whenever I hear the word, I picture someone taking bite out of a sandwich. That chunk of sandwich is equivalent to the unit of digital information represented by a byte. To extend this metaphor, half a byte is called a nibble or nybble. I would imagine that nibbling a sandwich would result in a smaller amount of food than biting a sandwich.