> and the Kalimba DSP coprocessor was even 24-bit char, short and ints

Yes, but sizeof char would still be 1, unless I'm mistaken.

I think I might have made a major pedagogical mistake when I declared char == 1 byte. What I meant was that when you're working in C, a char is the smallest addressable unit. Now, that smallest addressable unit is conventionally known as a byte, but it might not be 8-bits wide. These days it is almost always is thankfully.

Thank you for clarifying that, because I don't think my original comment was clear enough. I've been meaning for a while to write a blog post on the origins of 8-bit bytes as well as other conventions in CS.