Medieval bit-shifting and computation in binary
Long before computers were acknowledged to have been invented
Bits and bytes are very old, dating back to the 14th century, long before Charles Babbage’s calculating engine or Ada Lovelace’s programs for it.
A bit is the English name of a Spanish real, and a byte is a “piece of eight” or Spanish dollar or peso de 8 reales, “piece” being technically the true English cognate of peso. A word in the context of computing is then a Spanish escudo of 16 reales, and a double word is a Spanish doubloon of 32 reales.
The term byte appears in the Swedish Bible as treasure or spoils to be divided, certainly referring to a unit of exchange or money. Remember it was the Spanish Conquistadores who civilized the Swedish Vikings and converted them to Christianity.
The interpretation of a bit as a coin that may be flipped heads or tails as some form of binary calculation obviously was already familiar at the time of that old Spanish binary system of money.
The binary units of volume used by medieval English wine merchants are still with us today in America: tablespoons, fluid ounces, cups, pints, quarts, gallons, bushels, hogsheads etc., all units likewise being (approximately) in powers of two.
Binary number systems were very much used commercially in the 1500s.