> If longer bytes were needed, 60 bits would, of course, no longer be ideal.
That seems like a weird conclusion for the engineers to come to, because 60 is also a multiple of 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and (of course) 60 (the complement factors of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), so a selection of longer bytes are very obviously available.
Given that they balked at the cost of moving up to 64-bit words, I guess moving up to 420-bit computing (for those 7-bit bytes) was out of the question ;-)
I think it's more a remark that of the first half dozen byte sizes all six fit evenly but of the next dozen only three do. This makes the divisibility not really hold that much value in the end. Particularly since six bits isn't enough to hold dual case alphanumerics and 3 types of punctuation.
That seems like a weird conclusion for the engineers to come to, because 60 is also a multiple of 10, 12, 15, 20, 30 and (of course) 60 (the complement factors of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6), so a selection of longer bytes are very obviously available.
Given that they balked at the cost of moving up to 64-bit words, I guess moving up to 420-bit computing (for those 7-bit bytes) was out of the question ;-)