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Pronounced "ask-key"
ASCII is an acronym for the American Standard Code for Information
Interchange. It is a standard seven-bit code that was first
proposed by the American National Standards Institute or ANSI
in 1963, and finalized in 1968 as ANSI Standard X3.4. The
purpose of ASCII was to allow compatibility between different
types of data processing equipment including computers and
teletype machines.
Most sources credit Robert W. Bemer as being the "father"
of ASCII. In May 1961, Bemer submitted a proposal for a common
computer code to the ANSI and two years later ANSI agreed
upon a common code similar to Bob Bemer's original proposal.
Bob Bemer headed the team that created most of the ASCII code.
Later ASCII standards included: ISO-14962-1997 and ANSI-X3.4-1986(R1997).
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Notes:
In 1962, IBM wrote and promoted, a coding standard known
as Extended Binary-Coded-Decimal Interchange Code, or EBCDIC,
an eight-bit code that was a direct competitor to ASCII. However,
ASCII won the standards race.
Bob Bemer put the backslash into the ASCII text set.
In 1981, IBM first used the standard for personal computers,
before that the Univac 1050 was the computer to do so. Prior
to 1981, IBM used their own EBCDIC standard.
Text adapted from About.com
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