Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!tekig5!brianr From: brianr@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Brian Rhodefer) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: "big endian" and "little endian" - first usage for computers Message-ID: <3637@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM> Date: 3 Jan 89 21:52:34 GMT References: <2766@cbnews.ATT.COM> <10147@well.UUCP> Reply-To: brianr@tekig5.PEN.TEK.COM (Brian Rhodefer) Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Lines: 17 A few years ago, I was privy to the adoption of the bit/byte/word ordering scheme for an internal serial communication channel in a family of products here at Tektronix. Little-endian ordering was chosen, mainly out of the personal preference of the committee members, but an analog guru senior engineer offered what I thought was a pretty novel historical precedent for the choice. The AT&T folks, he claimed, were playing around with serially transmitted digitized voice data since shortly after man discovered fire, and they noticed that if the data was sent LSB first, it could easily be converted back to analog by a simple RC filter across the serial receive data line. He claimed that this was the reason that RS232 channels specify LSB-first transmission order. Well, *I* thought it was interesting.. Brian Rhodefer ...!tektronix!tekig5!brianr