>>>BTW, in my s/w engineering days we used to manipulate 4-bit chunks of data - called "nybbles"
>>
>>In my mainframe days even bits were expensive. :)
>
>Tell me about it! ICL 1903a using 24-bit core storage in my case.

Tell me about it. In my case we had a 24 byte disk which we had to wind up, and a tape unit which worked on coal.