Odd "endianness" [was Re: RE: Base 64 posts to the list]

The 5 characters per word is irrelevant to a discussion of tape, whether 9- or 7-track: That's how ASCII text was represented in memory, on disk, on DECtape, or on any other word-oriented medium. Representing the bits in an ASCII character by the character itself (to make divisions on the tape more clear), this appears diagrammatically as follows: Text: HELLOworld Memory: HHHHHHHEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLOOOOOOO_wwwwwwwooooooorrrrrrrlllllllddddddd_ Core Dump: High Density: SIXBIT: (7 track) HHHHHHHE HHHHHHHE HHHHHH EEEEEELL EEEEEELL HEEEEE LLLLLLLL LLLLLLLL EELLLL LLLLOOOO LLLLOOOO LLLLLL ....OOO_ OOO_wwww LLLLOO wwwwwwwo wwwooooo OOOOO_ oooooorr oorrrrrr wwwwww rrrrrlll rlllllll wooooo lllldddd ddddddd_ oorrrr ....ddd_ rrrlll lllldd ddddd_