[nik61]

The text makes it clear that capacity of the drum was 16384 12 bit "words", 196608 bits in total. The use of core memory was a big advance at that time. Previously the drums had been the main memory for that generation of machines, with optimal placement of code on the drum being seen as a major programming skill.

[JorgeGT]

> with optimal placement of code on the drum being seen as a major programming skill.

I remember reading an article/blog post from a programer of that time detailing how he optimized some code by taking into account the physics of the drum (such as mechanical inertia, angular momentum, etc.). I don't know how to locate it now but it was amazingly low-level.

[Stratoscope]

You may be thinking of the Story of Mel:

http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/story-of-mel.html

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel

[dungle6]

The words are 36 bits. 3 12 bit characters (the analogue to a byte)

[jonsen]

Wikipedia: "The size of the byte has historically been hardware dependent and no definitive standards existed that mandated the size – byte-sizes from 1[3] to 48 bits[4] are known to have been used in the past."

[andars]

12 3 bit characters.

[andars]

12 "character" words of 36 bits.