Really stupid PDP assembler question

Well, I wasn't around then (at least not with respect to computers). But I'd hazard a few guesses. - Word lengths that were multiples of 3 were commoner than word lengths that were multiples of 4 (of course, some, eg 36 bits, were both). - Existing devices (eg, nixies) could handle 0-7 better than 0-F. - Using letters as "digits" ran into human mindset trouble; using decimal representation for hex digits runs into bigger trouble, using multiple characters per functional digit. - Humans have trouble with a 16-digit system. (I know I do; I always have to stop and pay attention to avoid getting B and D confused.) How close did I come? :-) /~\ The ASCII der Mouse \ / Ribbon Campaign X Against HTML mouse(a)rodents.montreal.qc.ca / \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B