Why is "Arithmetic Coding" named as such?

Question

I've been reviewing the algorithm for arithmetic coding, and I can't seem to work out why it was given the name "arithmetic coding". Can anybody shed any light?

Answer 1

Because it is using arithmetic, coding the message into a giant fraction. This is as opposed to Huffman which codes each symbol as a series of bits.

From the abstract of the original paper:

Algorithms for encoding and decoding finite strings over a finite alphabet are described. The coding operations are arithmetic involving rational numbers ...