Assertion Supported AI assessment confidence: 95% certainty 4/5 debate potential 1/5

Shannon originally termed the bit 'binary digit' before a colleague coined 'bit'

Rob Goodman · a16z Podcast | From Mind at Play to Making the Information Age · Jan 2, 2019 · at 21:41

Rob Goodman, co-author of 'A Mind at Play', explains the origins of the word 'bit' in Claude Shannon's foundational 1948 paper.

0:00 / 0:08exact quote · 8.2s

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“What Shannon does in introducing the bit which he starts off calling the binary digit Before one of his colleagues comes up with BIT as a good abbreviation.”

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The claim, plainly

Claude Shannon originally introduced the concept of the bit under the name 'binary digit' before a colleague coined the abbreviation 'bit'.

a quote alone can be ambiguous, so this restates it with the references and context of the conversation around it resolved. AI-written; the tape below the player is the source.

Assessment

Historical documentation confirms both elements of the claim. In his seminal 1948 paper 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', Claude Shannon introduced the unit of information capacity as 'binary digits, or more briefly bits'. In the paper, Shannon explicitly credited his Bell Labs colleague John W. Tukey for suggesting the word 'bit'. Bell Labs records and historical publications confirm Tukey had proposed 'bit' as a contraction for 'binary digit' in internal memos and discussions between 1943 and 1947, prior to Shannon's landmark publication.

Shannon, C. E. (1948). 'A Mathematical Theory of Communication', Bell System Technical Journal, p. 380: 'If the base 2 is used the resulting units may be called binary digits, or more briefly bits, a word suggested by J. W. Tukey.'
John W. Tukey authored an internal Bell Labs memorandum dated January 9, 1947 ('Sequential Conversion of Continuous Data to Digital Data') using the term 'bit'.

Checked against

[1] quantamagazine.org [2] stackexchange.com [3] tvas.me [4] harvard.edu [5] historyofinformation.com [6] merriam-webster.com [7] catb.org [8] buffalo.edu

John Tukey bit binary digit Bell Labs Shannon 1948 Claude Shannon John Tukey bit binary digit coining "January 9, 1947" "Tukey" "bit" "binary digit"

assessed as of 2026-07-28

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Mentioned

bit Claude Shannon

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Shannon originally termed the bit 'binary digit' before a colleague coined 'bit'

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