Why is a float “single precision”?

Question

I\'m curious as to why the IEEE calls a 32 bit floating point number single precision. Was it just a means of standardization, or does \'single\' actually refer to a single \'so

Answer 1

On the machine I was working on at the time, a float occupied a single 36 bit register. A double occupied two 36 bit registers. The hardware had separate instructions for operating on the 1 register and 2 register versions of the number. I don't know for certain that that's where the terminology came from, but it's possible.