Unix History: Why does hexdump default to word alignment?

[Elazar Leibovich]

On Thu, Dec 1, 2011 at 11:32 AM, geoffrey mendelson <
geoffreymendelson at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> Well, let's see, going back to the 1960's, IBM 1401, word size set by a
> bit in memory, "a word mark" on a digit.
>

Thanks for educating me, you need to get a job in CS archaeology.
But what did the word mark mean? In my ignorance I thought that work meant
to imply amount of bits.
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