Byte using six-bit and nine-bit bytes were common into the 1960s. These machines most commonly had memory words of 12, 24, 36, 48 or 60 bits, corresponding to two, four, six, eight or 10 six-bit bytes. In this era, bytes in the instruction stream were often referred to as "syllables", before the term byte became common. The modern "de-facto" standard of eight bits, as documented in ISO/IEC 2382-1:1993, is a convenient power of two permitting the values 0 through 255 for one byte (2 in power of 8 = 256, where zero signifies number as well). The international standard IEC 80000-13
Walkie bits Walkie bits Walkie Bits are little plastic toy turtles that sing, dance and walk (they can walk in the rhythm which you tap on their shell). They are made by Takara, a Japanese toy company in June 2005. Walkie Bits are very small, only about five centimeters, and come in a variety of different colors and "flavors" like "blue soda" and "green pineapple". The Walkie Bits turtles are very popular in Japan, with 300,000 units sold within just a few months of their release. Many Japanese people collect them because there are so many colors and they are relatively inexpensive.