[jimktrains2]

They didn't feel like they needed those 2 bytes and, hey, why waste space?

Also, was a "byte" standardized at the time? Didn't they still have systems working in not-8-bit "byte", nibbles, byte, and 2-byte boundaries?

[danesparza]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byte#History - a byte was in the process of getting standardized at around the same time.