baud

/bawd/ , n. [simplified from its technical meaning] n. Bits per second.
Hence kilobaud or Kbaud, thousands of bits per second. The technical meaning
is level transitions per second ; this coincides with bps only for two-level
modulation with no framing or stop bits. Most hackers are aware of these
nuances but blithely ignore them. Historical note: baud was originally a
unit of telegraph signalling speed, set at one pulse per second. It was
proposed at the November, 1926 conference of the Comit Consultatif
International Des Communications Tlgraphiques as an improvement on the then
standard practice of referring to line speeds in terms of words per minute,
and named for Jean Maurice Emile Baudot (1845-1903), a French engineer who
did a lot of pioneering work in early teleprinters.

