Editor’s Note: The preceding post on Quantum Frontiers inspired the always curious Paul Ginsparg to do some homework on usage of the word “qubit” in papers posted on the arXiv. Rather than paraphrase Paul’s observations I will quote his email verbatim, so you can experience its Ginspargian style.

fig has total # uses of qubit in arxiv (divided by 10) per month, and
total # docs per month:
an impressive 669394 total in 29587 docs.

the graph starts at 9412 (dec '94), but that is illusory since qubit
only shows up in v2 of hep-th/9412048, posted in 2004.
the actual first was quant-ph/9503016 by bennett/divicenzo/shor et al
(posted 23 Mar '95) where they carefully attribute the term to
schumacher ("PRA, to appear '95") and jozsa/schumacher ("J. Mod Optics
'94"), followed immediately by quant-ph/9503017 by deutsch/jozsa et al
(which no longer finds it necessary to attribute term)

[neither of schumacher's first two articles is on arxiv, but otherwise
probably have on arxiv near 100% coverage of its usage and growth, so
permits a viral epidemic analysis along the lines of kaiser's "drawing
theories apart"  of use of Feynman diagrams in post wwII period].

ever late to the party, the first use by j.preskill was
quant-ph/9602016, posted 21 Feb 1996

#articles by primary subject area as follows (hep-th is surprisingly
low given the firewall connection...):

quant-ph 22096
cond-mat.mes-hall 3350
cond-mat.supr-con 880
cond-mat.str-el 376
cond-mat.mtrl-sci 250
math-ph 244
hep-th 228
physics.atom-ph 224
cond-mat.stat-mech 213
cond-mat.other 200
physics.optics 177
cond-mat.quant-gas 152
physics.gen-ph 120
gr-qc 105
cond-mat 91
cs.CC 85
cs.IT 67
cond-mat.dis-nn 55
cs.LO 49
cs.CR 43
physics.chem-ph 33
cs.ET 25
physics.ins-det 21
math.CO,nlin.CD 20
physics.hist-ph,physics.bio-ph,math.OC 19
hep-ph 18
cond-mat.soft,cs.DS,math.OA 17
cs.NE,cs.PL,math.QA 13
cs.AR,cs.OH 12
physics.comp-ph 11
math.LO 10
physics.soc-ph,physics.ed-ph,cs.AI 9
math.ST,physics.pop-ph,cs.GT 8
nlin.AO,astro-ph,cs.DC,cs.FL,q-bio.GN 7
nlin.PS,math.FA,cs.NI,math.PR,q-bio.NC,physics.class-ph,math.GM,
physics.data-an 6
nlin.SI,math.CT,q-fin.GN,cs.LG,q-bio.BM,cs.DM,math.GT 5
math.DS,physics.atm-clus,q-bio.PE 4
math.DG,math.CA,nucl-th,q-bio.MN,math.HO,stat.ME,cs.MS,q-bio.QM,
math.RA,math.AG,astro-ph.IM,q-bio.OT 3
stat.AP,cs.CV,math.SG,cs.SI,cs.SE,cs.SC,cs.DB,stat.ML,physics.med-ph,
math.RT 2
cs.CL,cs.CE,q-fin.RM,chao-dyn,astro-ph.CO,q-fin.ST,math.NA,
cs.SY,math.MG,physics.plasm-ph,hep-lat,math.GR,cs.MM,cs.PF,math.AC,
nucl-ex 1