My precious daughters and I were watching an old Betty Boop cartoon (transferred from the original nitrate to 1080p) which included a sign for an electric razor priced at “6 1/2 bits”. Knowing “two bits” represents a quarter dollar, making one bit ⅛ of a dollar, I wondered if a “bit” in computer-terminology was etymologically related.
They are not.
The ⅛ of a byte bit is shorthand for “binary digit”– a term which won out over such competing candidates as “bigit” or “binit”
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