BAUD

BAUD is a unit of measurement for the stepping speed in data transmission and indicates the number of steps per second on a transmission line. It is not specified how much Bits are transmitted per step. A step is defined as a signal of fixed duration, e.g. 1 bit or 1 character. If you multiply the number of bits per state by the baud rate, you get the transmission speed. If the number of states is exactly two i.e. exactly one bit is encoded with one state, the baud rate is the same as the bit rate.

The name Baud goes back to the French inventor J.M. Baudot, whose code for telex machines was used.