Yeah, it was basically a hack to extend the character repertoire in the time of 8-bit character sets. The kind of shenanigans Unicode was designed to replace.

Yeah, it was basically a hack to extend the character repertoire in the time of 8-bit character sets. The kind of shenanigans Unicode was designed to replace. You still see this kind of mischief when Outlook users type a smiley, and it is rendered as a "J" with the wingdings font. Readers of the mail where styling is stripped or who haven't the font installed just sees a confusing "J".