CNN - 1963: The debut of ASCII - July 6, 1999
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`2/16/15, 3:38 PM
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`1963: The debut of ASCII
`
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`July 6, 1999
`Web posted at: 12:58 p.m. EDT (1658 GMT)
`by Mary Brandel
`(IDG) -- If it weren't for a particular
`development in 1963, we wouldn't have
`e-mail and there would be no World
`Wide Web. Cursor movement, laser
`printers and video games — all of these
`owe a big debt of gratitude to this
`technological breakthrough.
`What is it? Something most of us take
`for granted today: ASCII. Yep, plain old
`ASCII, that simplest of text formats.
`To understand why ASCII (pronounced
`AS-KEE) is such a big deal, you have
`to realize that before it, different
`computers had no way to communicate
`with one another. Each manufacturer
`had its own way of representing letters
`in the alphabet, numbers and control
`codes. "We had over 60 different ways
`to represent characters in computers. It
`was a real Tower of Babel," says Bob
`Bemer, who was instrumental in
`ASCII's development and is widely
`known as "the father of ASCII."
`ASCII, which stands for American
`Standard Code for Information
`Interchange, functions as a common
`denominator between computers that
`otherwise have nothing in common. It
`works by assigning standard numeric
`http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/06/1963.idg/
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`1963
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`SCEA Ex. 1018 Page 1
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`2/16/15, 3:38 PM
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`
`THIS YEAR IN
`COMPUTER HISTORY
`Technology Happenings
`• The Univac I is retired after more
`than 73,000 hours of operation and
`given to the Smithsonian Institution.
`• Tandy Corp. acquires the assets of
`Radio Shack (nine stores). Charles
`Tandy pays nothing. Radio Shack is
`bankrupt; he agrees to pay the bills.
`• MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum
`develops the computer program Eliza,
`which simulates a conversation
`between a therapist and a patient.
`• Digital Equipment Corp. announces
`the PDP-5, its first 12-bit
`minicomputer.
`• IBM introduces the term "word
`processing" to sell dictation
`equipment.
`• 4.5 million computer chips are
`manufactured in the U.S. Eight years
`later, more than 600 million will be
`made.
`• Ivan Sutherland publishes
`Sketchpad, an interactive computer
`drawing system, as his MIT doctoral
`thesis.
`
`Born in 1963
`• Michael Jordan, former NBA
`basketball star
`• Garry Kasparov, chess
`grandmaster, who lost to IBM's
`supercomputer Deep Blue in 1997
`after beating the computer the
`previous year
`• Mary Brandel, Computerworld
`Flashback writer
`Other Notables
`• Best Actor Oscar: Sidney Poitier for
`Lilies of the Field. He was the first
`African-American male to receive a
`best actor Oscar.
`
`CNN - 1963: The debut of ASCII - July 6, 1999
`values to letters, numbers, punctuation
`marks and other characters such as
`control codes. An uppercase "A," for
`example, is represented by the number
`65.
`All the characters used in e-mail
`messages are ASCII characters, as are
`the characters in HTML documents.
`But in 1960, there was no such
`standardization. IBM's equipment alone
`used nine different character sets. "They
`were starting to talk about families of
`computers, which need to communicate.
`I said, 'Hey, you can't even talk to each
`other, let alone the outside world,'" says
`Bemer, who worked at IBM from 1956
`to 1962.
`Midway through Bemer's IBM career,
`this heterogeneity became a real
`concern. So in May 1961, Bemer
`submitted a proposal for a common
`computer code to the American
`National Standards Institute (ANSI).
`The X3.4 Committee — representing
`most computer manufacturers of the
`day and chaired by John Auwaerter,
`vice president of the former Teletype
`Corp. — was established and got right
`to work.
`It took the ANSI committee more than
`two years to agree on a common code.
`Part of the lengthy debate was caused
`by self-interest. The committee had to
`decide whose proprietary characters
`were represented. "It got down to
`nitpicking," Bemer says. "But finally,
`Auwaerter and I shook hands outside of
`the meeting room and said, 'This is it.'"
`Ironically, the end result bore a strong
`resemblance to Bemer's original plan.
`If you were to jump ahead to this year,
`you'd think it was smooth sailing after
`that. Today, ASCII is used in billions of
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`Page 2 of 4
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`2/16/15, 3:38 PM
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`• Best Picture: Tom Jones
`• Literature Pulitzer Prize: The
`Reivers, by William Faulkner
`
`CNN - 1963: The debut of ASCII - July 6, 1999
`dollars' worth of computer equipment as
`well as most operating systems — the
`exception being Windows NT, which
`uses the newer Unicode standard, which
`is only somewhat compatible with
`ASCII.
`However, there was an 18-year gap between the completion of ASCII in
`1963 and its common acceptance. This has everything to do with IBM and
`its System/360, which was released in 1964. While ASCII was being
`developed, everyone — even IBM — assumed the company would move
`to the new standard. Until then, IBM used EBCDIC, an extension of the
`old punch-card code.
`But just as ASCII became a done deal and the System/360 was ready for
`release, Dr. Frederick Brooks, head of IBM's OS/360 development team,
`told Bemer the punch cards and printers wouldn't be ready for ASCII on
`time. IBM tried to develop a way for the System/360 to switch between
`ASCII and EBCDIC, but the technique didn't work.
`Until 1981, when IBM finally used ASCII in its first PC, the only ASCII
`computer was the Univac 1050, released in 1964 (although Teletype
`immediately made all of its new typewriter-like machines work in
`ASCII). But from that point on, ASCII became the standard for computer
`communication.
`The story of ASCII wouldn't be complete without mentioning the
`"escape" sequence. According to Bemer, it's the most important piece of
`the ASCII puzzle. Early in the game, ANSI recognized that 128 characters
`were insufficient to accommodate a worldwide communication system.
`But the seven-bit limitation of the hardware at the time forbade them to go
`beyond that.
`So Bemer developed the escape sequence, which allows the computer to
`break from one alphabet and enter another. Since 1963, more than 150
`"extra-ASCII" alphabets have been defined.
`Along with Cobol, ASCII is one of the few basic computer technologies
`from the 1960s that still thrives today.
`
`Brandel is a frequent contributor to Computerworld. Contact her at brandel@cwix.com.
`
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`http://edition.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/06/1963.idg/
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`Page 3 of 4
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`CNN - 1963: The debut of ASCII - July 6, 1999
`
`2/16/15, 3:38 PM
`
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