Loren P Meissner asked:
> And I think in the early days, the "word" occupied by a default integer
> was usually the smallest addressable storage unit. (Was IBM 360 the
> first byte-addressable machine?)
If by "byte addressable" you mean "less than 16 bits" the answer is no.
The IBM 1401 had 6-bit characters, with "word mark" bits to delineate
fields. I have the manual for the 1401 Fortran compiler. Pre-360
successors to the 1401 included the 1460, 1440, 1410 and 7010 (or was it
7070?) The 1480 was planned but then not built with that label. Somebody
told me it became the 360/20. Honeywell had a competitor for the 1400
series called the 200. The Univac 1005 was also a character-addressable
machine. The NCR 315 (actually built by CDC) allowed addressing 4-bit
BCD digits, 6-bit characters or 12-bit integers that they called "slabs".
Of the machines that had good-size integers and floating-point hardware,
it is possible the 360 was the first to include byte addressing.
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