Werner Buchholz is a noted American computer scientist. In July 1956, he coined the term byte

Byte

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...

, a unit of digital information

Units of information

In computing and telecommunications, a unit of information is the capacity of some standard data storage system or communication channel, used to measure the capacities of other systems and channels...

 to describe an ordered group of bit

Bit

A bit is the basic unit of information in computing and telecommunications; it is the amount of information stored by a digital device or other physical system that exists in one of two possible distinct states...

s, as the smallest amount of data that a computer could process (bite).

As a member of the team at International Business Machines (IBM) that designed the IBM 701

IBM 701

The IBM 701, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer...

 and the IBM 7030 Stretch, IBM's first transistorized supercomputer

Transistor computer

A transistor computer is a computer which uses discrete transistors instead of vacuum tubes. The "first generation" of electronic computers used vacuum tubes, which generated large amounts of heat, were bulky, and were unreliable. A "second generation" of computers, through the late 1950s and...

, his work was standards-setting in the field of character

Character (computing)

In computer and machine-based telecommunications terminology, a character is a unit of information that roughly corresponds to a grapheme, grapheme-like unit, or symbol, such as in an alphabet or syllabary in the written form of a natural language....

 encoding on computing systems.

In 1990, Buchholz received the IEEE Computer Pioneer Award

IEEE Computer Pioneer award

The Computer Pioneer Award was established in 1981 by the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society to recognize and honor the vision of those people whose efforts resulted in the creation and continued vitality of the computer industry...

, awarded since 1981 to recognize and honor individuals whose effort resulted in the creation and vitality of the computer industry.

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