https://ebyte.org/tags/the-name/ Recent content in The Name on ebyte.org Hugo en-us Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://ebyte.org/ebyte-and-the-story-of-the-byte-behind-the-name/ Tue, 20 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000 https://ebyte.org/ebyte-and-the-story-of-the-byte-behind-the-name/ <p>EByte is a tool that cares about bytes, every one of them, so the name starts there. The word itself is younger than most people guess, and its odd spelling was on purpose.</p> <p>First came the bit. The word is short for binary digit, and Claude Shannon put it in print in 1948 in his paper on the mathematics of communication, crediting John Tukey with it. A bit is a single 0 or 1. Useful, but too small to hold a letter or a number on its own.</p>