byte alignment

[Peter Bain]

The IBM STRETCH (7030) ca 1957, was bit addressable. The instruction
contained a word address (64 bit word) , bit offset, and a "byte length",
or operand size. The machine was a masterpiece of baroque architecture:
all sorts of nifty things that were practical to use only in assembler.
The term "byte" was coined for the STRETCH, and originally ment a variable 
size operand.
		-peter