[slavik81]

RFC 1951 (NTP) was published in 1988 and refers to 56k modems. Does a 56k modem operate at 57344 bits per second or 56000 bits per second? Your claim implies the former, but I'm pretty sure it was always the latter.

> a byte isn’t 10bits

It could be. Historically, the number of bits per byte varied somewhat from machine to machine. Many standards used the term 'octets' to avoid ambiguity.

[laumars]

Historically yes. But even as early as the 60s 8bit was the norm. IIRC C then “standardised” 8bits (though ASCII went some way to doing that prior to C).