ASCII

American Standard Code for Information Interchange

A character encoding standard used in computers and electronic communication devices to represent text. Developed in the 1960s, ASCII was one of the earliest methods established for encoding textual data in computers. Key Aspects of ASCII:

1. Basic Structure: ASCII assigns a numerical value to letters, digits, punctuation marks, and other characters. For example, the uppercase letter A is represented by the number 65.
2. Standard Size: ASCII originally used a 7-bit binary number to represent each character, allowing 128 possible characters. This includes 33 non-printing control characters (which control devices such as printers) and 95 printable characters.
3. Extended ASCII: Later, an 8-bit version of ASCII, often referred to as Extended ASCII, was developed, expanding the number of possible characters to 256. This allowed for the inclusion of additional symbols, diacritical marks, and graphic symbols.
4. Role in Modern Computing: ASCII played a fundamental role in developing modern computing and the internet. It was widely adopted for representing text in computers, telecommunications equipment, and other devices.
5. Unicode and UTF-8: While ASCII is limited in its ability to represent characters from non-English languages, it laid the groundwork for more comprehensive encoding systems like Unicode and UTF-8. Unicode, particularly its encoding UTF-8, encompasses a broader range of characters from multiple languages and is backward compatible with ASCII.
6. Legacy and Usage: Despite the advent of more advanced encoding systems, ASCII is still widely used, particularly in programming, data formats, and communication protocols where simple text is required.

ASCII is a foundational character encoding standard that paved the way for the complex text representation systems we use in today’s digital world.

• Abbreviation: ASCII