I am trying to convert "words per minute" into "bits per second."
Bits per second, in turn, is APPROXIMATELY equal to baud, a common
measure of modem (or other means of data transmission) speed. I need to
quantify one factor: How many letters are in a "word?" If we assume that
there are 5 (five) letters to a word, my calculations look like this:


WPM = 50
LPM = WPM * 5 # letters per minute
BPM = LPM * 8 # bits per minute
BPS = BPM / 60 # bits per second
BPS = 33.33


I have assumed 8 bits to the byte, which is quite generous
considering that Morse cannot encode an 8 bit character set or, for that
matter, the full ASCII character set, which is only 7 bit.
Can anyone see any obvious errors? Is 50 words per minute really
equal to about 33 baud?

--
Klystron