[D66] The Evolution of Character Codes (1874-1968)

[René Oudeweg]

Paper:

https://ia800606.us.archive.org/17/items/enf-ascii/ascii.pdf

The Evolution of Character Codes, 1874-1968
Eric Fischer
enf at pobox.com

Abstract

Émile Baudot’s printing telegraph was the first widely adopted device to 
encode letters, numbers, and symbols as uniform-length binary sequences. 
Donald Murray introduced a second successful code of this type, the 
details of which continued to evolve until versions of Baudot’s and 
Murray’s codes were standardized as International Telegraph Alphabets 
No. 1 and No. 2, respectively. These codes were used for decades before 
the appearance of computers and the changing needs of communications 
required the design and standardization of a new code. Years of debate 
and compromise resulted in the ECMA-6 standard in Europe, the ASCII 
standard in the United States, and the ISO 646 and International 
Alphabet No. 5 standards internationally.

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