Talk:Timeline of binary prefixes

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Graphical timeline[edit]

Earliest and latest instances of each notation that appear in the above list. This is not for the article, but just for our own internal use here. It's not actually accurate, since we haven't found everything yet, and is too close to original research to put in the article. (I guess it would make more sense to track each thing, like hard drives/memory/data rates, separately):

Ludwig[edit]

I removed the statement "The computer has two blocks of 4K, 18-bit words of memory, (1K=1024 words), attached to its central processor" as it was incorrectly attributed to Ludwig 1963. Does anyone know where it is from? Thunderbird2 (talk) 16:13, 20 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's from Gordon Bell.[1] Ghettoblaster (talk) 22:21, 23 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Deleted everything before 1998[edit]

Binary prefixes didn't exist before 1998. This entire timeline seems like more of a history of electronic storage than of binary prefixes. We already have other articles for that. I am going to delete everything before 1998 and replace it with a short paragraph saying that the KB, MB and GB were ambiguously defined in different contexts. Since no one is actually reading this, I'm going to go ahead and do it. However if you disagree, then revert and explain why here.--RaptorHunter (talk) 06:17, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

seems to me that it was either explicitly about binary prefixes; or at least about binary use of prefixes. Perhaps the title should be changed to better reflect the scope. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 18:10, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Customary binary prefixes began as early as 1964. I see no need to change anything other than perhaps add a clarification to the lead that the timeline starts with the use of the words bit and byte. Tom94022 (talk) 18:51, 12 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Binary vs decimal addressing[edit]

This article ignores an important distinction in early computer history: many early machines used decimal addressing (ENIAC, UNIVAC 1, IBM 702, 705, 650, 1400s, 1620, etc.) while others used binary addressing (Colossus, Whirlwind, FSQ-7, IBM 701, 704, 709, 7090, etc). Of course decimal machines reported memory in decimal multiples and K, if it was used, meant 1000. It was only in binary machines that memory came in powers of two or multiples of 1024 units. It was just with binary addressed machines that K took on its second meaning as an informal shortcut for 1024. Only in the mid 60s with the introduction of the IBM System/360 did binary addressing became universal in the computer industry. By not making this distinction clearly, the article muddles what was really going on.--agr (talk) 23:53, 28 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Actually most are listed in the preamble to this article and some are listed in the body (notably absent Eniac and Univac 1). The issue is not so much whether computers used decimal or binary addressing but whether in describing the memory space they used prefixes or not and, when used were the prefixes in a decimal, binary or vague state. For example, absent other information 16K is ambiguous and it is not until we see 64K versus 65K can we reach any conclusion as to the author's intent. I agree with your view of history but suggest that the place to make the distinction is not in this timeline but in the related main memory section of the Binary_prefix article where the history is beyond muddled to the point of misrepresenting the co-evolution of binary and decimal prefixes in main memory. Tom94022 (talk) 17:48, 3 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I took a quick walk thru Univac 1 material including a full text search of its Manual Of Operation and concluded that Remington Rand then made little use of any prefixes in describing the product. I could find no instances of use of any prefix in describing memory or tape capacity. I did find several instances of million and mega in a decimal sense as in, "the "rep rate" is assumed to be 1,000,000 pulses per second or a frequency of 1 megacycle, (1,000,000 cycles per second)." (emphasis added, from p.21 of linked doc above). I'm not sure a negative report is worth adding to this timeline and it might be OR. Tom94022 (talk) 18:29, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, I made some edits at Binary_prefix. Also see my comments at Talk:Hard disk drive. The problem is that this all started as informal usage, so it's hard to document original intent. K=1024 only becomes important once memory gets much bigger than 32K and that came with the third generation of computers, mid 60s. Before then everyone was comfortable saying 32K for 32768, but if you had asked them they would have said K means 1000. Even the distinction between 64K and 65K usage didn't matter. Everyone knew what was meant. I remember being told K means 1024 in memory size and finding the idea sort of weird until I got used to it. --agr (talk) 20:51, 4 May 2011 (UTC)[reply]

When did Exabyte appear?[edit]

The article claims "exabyte" was defined in 1996. It was in use years before that.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte_(company) the company called "Exabyte" was started in 1985. They picked the name because Exabyte not in some small way to be comical: exabytes were so huge nobody would ever have a storage system that large. Therefore, we know the term existed that early.

I haven't been able to find a reference that gives the exact year.

TomLimoncelli (talk) 20:34, 12 July 2012 (UTC) TomLimoncelli[reply]

I added the founding of Exabyte to the timeline, along with the years that the various SI prefixes giga, tera, exa, peta, zetta and yotta were introduced. Kilo and mega are from before the 1940s. Once the prefixes are introduced, all combinations are understandable. For what it's worth, I remember megabyte being used in meeting 1970 and the term was familiar then. I also remember when I first heard the term gigabyte, in the early 70s, and that was quite startling. (I visited an apparel manufacturer that had one of the first IBM commercial installations with no magnetic tape drives. The system had racks of disk pack drives that totaled 3 gigabytes. It ran their entire business.) --agr (talk) 21:37, 12 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]

IBM WebSphere[edit]

According to this page, the text making use of the binary prefixes KiB, MiB, etc, is dated 5 December 2008. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:20, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See also 'Smart SOA Connectivity Patterns: Unleash the Power of IBM WebSphere Connectivity Portfolio', Virendar Solanki et al (IBM Redbooks, September 2011). Dondervogel 2 (talk) 23:37, 10 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Decimal vs binary meanings of 'terabyte'[edit]

There is a discussion of the decimal and binary meanings of 'terabyte' at Talk:Terabyte#Disputed_references. The discussion has possible implications for this page. If you wish to comment, please do so on the terabyte talk page. Dondervogel 2 (talk) 10:54, 29 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified[edit]

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Table removed from article on OR grounds - place here because analysis seems relevant for discussion on Talk page[edit]

  • The following statistics were taken from the December 1979 editions of Byte Magazine and Datamation. The first number is the number of articles or advertisements that used any variant of megabyte for HDDs or Main memory while the second number is the total number of times it was used in the advertisement or article.
Variant Used In Decimal Sense Used In Binary Sense
million 1 / 1
megabyte 9 / 12 1 / 1
MByte or M Byte 3 /10
MB 5 / 18
Mb 2 / 2 1 / 3
M 1 / 1
Total 20 / 43 2 / 4

-- (unsigned) 2016-09-11T11:13:28 Dondervogel 2

The article title is narrower than the topic of the article[edit]

The article is more like "timeline of measurement prefixes", as it discusses the use of both K/M/G/T/... and Ki/Mi/Gi/Ti prefixes, as well as the use of no prefixes, just giving counts of individual bytes or words.

And it starts out discussing the origins of both decimal and binary prefixes. Guy Harris (talk) 03:05, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I don't see the problem. The article starts by introducing the origin of binary prefixes in the 1790s. There was a btw statement about the decimal prefixes d, c and m that I have just removed. All other metric prefixes (as well as the "no prefix" examples) are there to give context to the binary ones.
Can you be more specific? Perhaps suggest an improvement? Dondervogel 2 (talk) 22:43, 22 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
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