The coining of the term "qubit" is attributed to Benjamin Schumacher.[3] In the acknowledgments of his paper, Schumacher states that the term qubit was invented in jest due to its phonological resemblance with an ancient unit of length called cubit, during a conversation with William Wootters. The paper describes a way of compressing states emitted by a quantum source of information so that they require fewer physical resources to store. This procedure is now known as Schumacher compression.