endianness - What are the benefits of the different endiannesses?

Question

Why did some processor manifacturers decide to use

• Little endian
• Big endian
• Middle endian
• Any others?

?

I've heard that with big endian one can find out faster, if a number is negative or positive, because that bit is the first one. (This doesn't matter on modern CPUs, as individual bit can't be accessed anymore.)

Answer 1

The benefit of little endianness is that a variable can be read as any length using the same address.

For example a 32 bit variable can be read as an 8 bit or 16 bit variable without changing the address. This may have limited benefit these days, but in the days of assembler and limited memory it could be a significant advantage