American Standard Code for Information Interchange
(ASCII) is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English
alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and
other devices that work with text.
Most modern character-encoding schemes—which
support many more characters than did the original—have a historical basis in
ASCII. Work on ASCII formally began October 6, 1960. Compared to earlier
telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more
convenient sorting of lists, and added features for
devices other than teleprinters. The X3.2 subcommittee designed ASCII based on
earlier teleprinter encoding systems.
Like other character encodings, ASCII
specifies a correspondence between digital bit patterns and character symbols
(i.e. graphemes and control characters). This allows digital devices to
communicate with each other and to process, store, and communicate
character-oriented information such as written language. Before ASCII was
developed, the encodings in use included 26 alphabetic characters, 10 numerical
digits, and from 11 to 25 special graphic symbols.
Curiosity: 3568 ASCII is an asteroid named after the character encoding
Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia