A unit of measurement for data transmission speed, representing the number of signal changes per second in a communication channel. Often confused with bits per second, though they can be different depending on the encoding method.
Named after Émile Baudot, a French telegraph engineer who developed the Baudot code in the 1870s for telegraphy. The term was officially adopted in the 1920s by the International Telegraph Union. Baudot's work revolutionized telegraph communication by creating a more efficient encoding system.
While people often use 'baud' and 'bits per second' interchangeably, they're actually different - one baud can carry multiple bits of information depending on how the signal is encoded, like how a single symbol in Morse code can represent different letters. The classic modem speeds like '56k' were actually measured in bits per second, not baud, which explains why early internet was both precisely measured and painfully slow.
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