Re: ANSI ASCII history

[flash flash@xxxxxxxx]

ASCII uses either 7 or 8 bits to encode characters; ANSI uses more bits.
For ASCII, 2 to the 7th gives 128 possible characters, whereas 2 to the
8th gives 256.

Back when the world was new, the unit network message (called an
"asynchronous frame") was a fixed size, consisting of a start bit, a
stop bit, and either 7 bits for the character plus one parity bit (for
error checking), or 8 bits for the character but no parity bit. The
7-bit character field would cover an IBM keyborad (Amerikan, you
undersatand) ca. 1974. As the people who invented networks were mostly
using IBM mainframes, they cut the frame size to fit what they knew. As
Manuel noted, "European characters are a problem in plain ASCII (7-bit)
files." To include Umlauts and various other toodles, the parity bit was
dropped giving 8 bits. A number of symbols seem pretty useless now
(spade, club, heart, double exlamation, what WERE they thinking back in
1974?). ANSI added more bits, giving more possible encodings.

As we say in networking, the nice thing about standards is, there are so
many to choose from.