How Do I...

...access individual bits in a byte in C++?

>>16
Automatic masking seems pretty useless TBH and your `int16' already exists as short/int and as int_least16_t/int_fast16_t with <stdint.h>.

>>17
Code does not have to make assumptions about the limits of integer types; it can consult the constants from <limits.h>.

>>18
Read http://home.att.net/~jackklein/c/inttypes.html