> Both of these first microprocessors were complete CPUs-on-a-chip and had similar characteristics. But because the 4004 was designed for serial BCD arithmetic while the 8008 was made for 8-bit character handling, their instruction sets were quite different.
Sounds like by 1971 the 8-bit byte was a foregone conclusion already unless you were making a calculator (HP calculators were 4-bit even into the 90s).

The S/360 had consolidated the 8-bit byte in 1964 and it seems it really "propagated everywhere" from there[0], even though the 36-bit-word PDP-10 had been released in 1966.

See the mastodon.social/@brouhaha/1099… subthread on the STRETCH's influence on the S/360.
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[0] libranet.de/display/0b6b25a8-1…