On 9/8/22 12:51, Jon Steinhart wrote: The famous 1946 paper, "Preliminary discussion of the logical design of an electronic computing device",  by Arthur Burks,  Herman H. Goldstine, John von Neumann, contains this sentence. I have this paper in Computer Structures: Readings and Examples, by Bell and Newell, but it's also online in many forms ** * 4. The memory organ * 4.1. Ideally one would desire an indefinitely large memory capacity such that any particular aggregate of 40 binary digits, or /word /(cf. 2.3), would be immediately available-i.e. in a time which is somewhat or considerably shorter than the operation time of a fast electronic multiplier. I also looked in the Oxford English Dictionary for etymology. It has: *d.* /Computing/. A consecutive string of bits (now typically 16, 32, or 64, but formerly fewer) that can be transferred and stored as a unit./machine word/: see /machine word/ n. at machine n. Compounds 2 <https://www-oed-com.ezproxy.bpl.org/view/Entry/111850#eid38480019>. 1946 H. H. Goldstine & J. Von Neumann in J. von Neumann /Coll. Wks./ (1963) V. 28   In ‘writing’ a word into the memory, it is similarly not only the time effectively consumed in ‘writing’ which matters, but also the time needed to ‘find’ the specified location in the memory. [plus newer citations] Dan H