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It wasn't a hack though. Characters were low level addressable data. It's no coincidence that on machines that had a 6-bit wide character set the smallest addre
by hnlmorg 5y ago
It wasn't a hack though. Characters were low level addressable data. It's no coincidence that on machines that had a 6-bit wide character set the smallest addressable data (a byte) was also 6-bits (I know ASCII is 7-bits but that was to reduce transmission overhead or allow for a parity bit when required, eg on punch tape or cards that often supported 8 columns of bits).
The way machines worked back then would be you'd address a byte of data, that byte contained instructions. Those instructions were sometimes printable data, it was sometimes formatting data, and it was sometimes control data.
It wasn't until operating systems became more sophisticated, hardware become more sophisticated and the two became decoupled, that character encodings became the abstraction for rendering text that we think of them as today.
- kps 5y agoCharacter codes predate computers. CR and LF codes date to 1901.
- hnlmorg 5y agoEven earlier than that. CR and LF go back to Baudot code (which is where term 'baud' also originates) and that was created in the 1870s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code
- kps 5y agoBaudot's (ITA1) was linear, with no concept of lines. Murray's (which evolved into ITA2 with minor changes) added CR LF, since he developed a typewriter-like system.
- hnlmorg 5y agoAhhh I see where you've gotten that 1901 date from now: > In 1901, Baudot's code was modified by Donald Murray > The Murray code also introduced what became known as "format effectors" or "control characters" – the CR (Carriage Return) and LF (Line Feed) codes. (source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#Murray_code https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baudot_code#Murray_code) Thanks for the correction there. Learned something new today :)