probably why bytes are 8 bits apart from being handy for encoding text

you can encode the address of each bit of a byte in 3 bits, so the territory is 8 but the map only needs 3 to name the positions

up until the 90s it was still very common to use bits as compact flags, using byte AND flag NEQ 0 to detect it, 8 bits lets you create a map for the individual bits in 32 bytes

something i would do if i was designing discrete logic is use groups of binary and trinary, also, if you use a tristate and two binary you can make a single memory unit of 0-11 (base 12) which is much more amenable to precision in many general purpose arithmetic tasks, especially if you are using fractions, for common proportions you can get total precision, whereas with a pure binary coding 3, 6, 9, 12 fractions get ugly, and our base 10 number system is based on 2 and 5, the old babylonian base 60 encoding is even more precise, and this is why it's the divider for minutes and hours as well, that precision - this would involve individual units of 2 binary, 1 trinary and one pent... whatever it would be called

i think they settled on binary though because it's more efficient in terms of transistor count