[OT] Why is it called string?

[John Baxter]

I cann't recall the machine I'm referring to (it was product of Bull),
but I am sure that lecturer called 7 bit units as "octets".

The "oct" prefix, which reasonable people might expect to mean "8" has
been abused for several years. One evening at WTBS (the MIT version,
before the sailor guy from Atlanta bought the callsign from my
successors), I soldered up an 11-pin octal plug. Then I unwired it,
installed the plug cover, and soldered it up again.

Then, I unwired it, turned the plug cover around the proper way, and
wired it up yet again. [Pretty good lesson: I haven't forgotten a plug
cover or gotten one backwards since.]

--John