3 ms·
There's a well-documented reason for the placement of (nearly) every single character in ASCII. Unfortunately, not all of the reasons are still very compelling.
by breadbox 13y ago
There's a well-documented reason for the placement of (nearly) every single character in ASCII. Unfortunately, not all of the reasons are still very compelling. In fact, a distressingly large number of them have to do with the various techniques for encoding bytes on punch cards.
For the curious, I recommend the book "Coded Character Sets: History and Development" by Charles E. Mackenzie. It's an older book, and so it's about the pre-Unicode, US-centric codes. Also, most of the pages focus on the many variants of EBCDIC rather than the stabler ASCII standard. But I guarantee that it will give you a lot of historical perspective.
- asmithmd1 13y agoHoly $h!7 - That book is 650 pages. That is a lot of history.
- LowKarmaAccount 13y agoAmazon's information is incorrect. According to WorldCat and Google Books, the book is 513 pages, not 650. Also, its copyright date should be 1980, not 1979.
- kps 13y agoSince this is such a burning question — my copy is ©1980 and ends at page 513. I am now desperate to see the 137 pages of shocking censored material from the legendary 1979 edition.
- JoeAltmaier 13y agoSurely EBCDIC is what you're referring to?
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]