BCPL and B were untyped languages, where the fundamental unit of the language was a &quot;cell&quot; that could hold either an integer or a pointer. Also fundamental was that memory was addressable by cells, and that adding one to a pointer (which could also be an integer) must cause it to refer to the next cell. This could only be implemented efficiently on a word-addressed machine. When confronted with the byte-addressed PDP-11, they created a language where the basic unit was a &quot;char&quot;. Fortunately, they also added types, so that the language could adapt to changing architectures. However, they were fortunate, or foresighted, in that virtually every architecture after the mid-70&#x27;s was byte-addressable. C does not adapt well to word-addressed machines, but that didn&#x27;t slow its adoption because word-addressed machines disappeared rapidly after C was born.