system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
ELI5:Who ended up deciding the standard monitor resolutions and what's the origin?

One thing I've noticed is that most of them, mathematically make sense, since they're all multipliers of 8. I'll give you some examples.

8 * 96 = **768**

8 * 160 = **1.280**

8 * 180 = **1.440**

8 * 200 = **1.600**

8 * 240 = **1.920**

8 * 320 = **2.560**

8 * 480 = **3.840**

Why the 8 as a multiplier, you ask.
**One byte = 8 bits**.

Don't ask me why, but it seems to be related.


Yes, there's some that don't follow the rule. 

For example, 8 * 170.75 = 1366.
The reason for it, I think, is because they came up with this one while trying to turn the classic 1024*768 into 16:9. So, (768 / 9) * 16 = 1365.333 and they rounded it (above, to be a pair number, I'd say).
So the (laptop) resolution was born: 1366 x 768.


This may just be a coincidence and that's what I want to know. What truly is the origin of all these sizes and who decided them?
gpt
Back in the olden days a standard screen was big enough to display 80 characters across and 60 vertically (for a 4:3 aspect ratio) and each character was 8 pixels wide and 8 pixels tall. Thus the overall resolution was 640x480. There were smaller ones before but this was considered a universal standard by that point. From there every resolution was a multiple of 8 more pixels. This standard comes from IBM who were *the* powerhouse in personal computing at the time.

The reason 8x8 was chosen for a character size is so that in an 8x8 grid you can address both the vertical and horizontal using only one byte for each. In fact, if you tried to make it lower, such as 7x7 you would still need one byte for each since a byte is the smallest addressable unit in a computer. The vast majority do not support addressing the individual bits and to do so would require another more complex hardware. Thus 8x8 is the most efficient and 16x16 is too big.

So more or less you are correct.