A typical size for the C int type is 4 bytes.

Most machines are byte addressable.

This means that a choice must be made for what address to assign to a multibyte data type like an int; that is, should the address of the int be the address of the least significant byte or the address of the most significant byte.

Unfortunately, some machines do it one way and other machines, the other way.

Machines that use the address of the most significant byte as the address of the whole integer are called big endian machines.

Machines using the address of the least significant byte as the address of the whole integer are called little endian machines.