During an internship in 1986 I wrote C code for a machine with 10-bit bytes, the BBN C/70. It was a horrible experience, and the existence of the machine in the first place was due to a cosmic accident of the negative kind.
replies(6):
And I was tasked with reading a tape with binary data in 8-bit format. Hilarity ensued.
8 bit tape? Probably the format the hardware worked in... not actually sure I haven't used real tapes but it's plausible.
36 bit per word computer? Sometimes 0..~4Billion isn't enough. 4 more bits would get someone to 64 billion, or +/- 32 billion.
As it turns out, my guess was ALMOST correct
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-bit_computing
Paraphrasing, legacy keying systems were based on records of up to 10 printed decimal digits of accuracy for input. 35 bits would be required to match the +/- input but 36 works better as a machine word and operations on 6 x 6 bit (yuck?) characters; or some 'smaller' machines which used a 36 bit larger word and 12 or 18 bit small words. Why the yuck? That's only 64 characters total, so these systems only supported UPPERCASE ALWAYS numeric digits and some other characters.