“The terms big-endian and little-endian derive from Jonathan Swift‘s 1726 satirical novel, Gulliver’s Travels. In the novel, the fictional Lilliputians‘ major political issue is whether eggs should be cracked open on the big end or the little end. Those who favor the big end are big-endians, whereas those who favor the small are little-endians.
The similarity between the Lilliputians and our big-endian versus little-endian debate is that the argument is rooted deeper in politics than technical merits.”
Procede del libro Linux Kernel Development, de Robert Love.
Capítulo 19: Portabilidad (2ª edición)
Update: Por cierto, se me olvidó poner esto de la misma fuente, está muy elegante (sirve para saber el endianness de la máquina donde se ejecuta):
if(1==*(char*)&x) {
/* little endian */
}else{
/* big endian */
}
