If you want to read up more on this topic, the terms you can search for is "consistent" vs "inconsistent" (little/big endian): * Consistent little endian (Intel 80x86): bytes right to left, bits right to left * Consistent big endian (PDP11, TI 9900): bytes left to right, bits left to right * Inconsistent little endian (?): bytes right to left, bits left to right * Inconsistent big endian (Motorola 68000): bytes left to right, bits right to left