For some context in case anyone was curious, Wikipedia believes that both vi and Emacs were (originally) written in 1976, which is 41 years ago. Unix dates fro

For some context in case anyone was curious, Wikipedia believes that both vi and Emacs were (originally) written in 1976, which is 41 years ago. Unix dates from ~1969--1973 depending on your definition, which is 44--48 years ago. Accordingly, the reference to "54 year old" appears to be to the first standard as well as first commercial use of ASCII, in 1963. That first ASCII standard from 1963 specified eight "separators" simply named S0 through S7 at codes 0x18--0x1F. The 1965 update reused the first four for other purposes (eg cancel and escape) and labeled 0x1C--0x1F with the more descriptive names we now know.