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THE.ASCII.ART.EMPORIUM

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ASCII code for 'A.'
The committee decided on a seven bit code; this allowed for twice as many
characters as existing six bit standards, and permitted a parity bit on eight
bit tape. So there were 128 slots to dole out, and given the various
non-typographic computing agendas to attend to, it was inevitable that some
common symbols, including several that had always been on typewriter keyboards,
wouldn't make the cut. (The typewriter layout had certain obvious failings in
computer applications, for example: overloading the digit 1 and lower case L,
so it couldn't be blindly adopted.)
Three handy fractions were cut: ¼ ½ ¾. This makes sense, especially when
you consider that the ASCII committee was composed of engineers. I'm sure they
thought, in their engineer's way, "Why have ¼ but not 1/3? And if we have 1/3,
then why not 1/5? Or 3/32?" Similarly, the committee apparently found $0.19 an
acceptable, if somewhat obtuse, way of expressing the price of a Bic pen. At
any rate, the popular and useful cent sign didn't make it.
And so the cent sign was off keyboards, terminals, and printers. Not that many
people noticed right away. The companies behind ASCII sold big, expensive
computers that were used to run businesses, and few cared that there wasn't a
cent sign character on one's new line printer. Heck, if your printer could
handle lower-case letters, you were state of the art.
But when personal computers began to appear in the late 1970s, the primary
application driving their adoption was word processing. These new small
computers used the ASCII standard—after all, that's what standards are for. By
the millions, typewriter keyboards (with ¢) were traded in for Apple IIs and
IBM PCs (without ¢). While it's true that the cent sign was ultimately made
part of other larger encoding standards, and is possible to create at modern
PCs with a little effort—the damage had been done. Without a cent key in front
of them, writers of books, newspapers, magazines, and advertisements made do
without. And over time, $0.19 began to look like the right way to say 19¢. In
another few years the cent sign will look as alien as those strange S's our
forefathers were using when they wrote the constitution.
Appendix S
With a little effort, ASCII can express more than words. Presented for your
amusement: Bart, Homer, and Marge Simpson.
|\/\/\/|
| |
| |
| (o)(o)
C _)
| ,___|
| /
/____\
_______
/ \
\/\/ |
| (o)(o)
C .---_)
| |.___|
| \__/
/______\
/______/ \
(####)
(#######)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(########)
(#########)
(#########)
(#########)
(o)(o)(##)
,_C (##)
/____, (##)
\ (#)
| |
oooooo
Appendix E ASCII Printable Character Set
The cent sign's omission was especially unfair when you go down the list and
consider the characters that did get in, including several that had never had a
role in our language. For example, backslash: \—just like a slash, only
backwards. That's not confusing at all. Hell no. Then there's the accent
characters that represented ASCII's half-hearted effort to support European
languages: The grave: ` (backward accent). The tilde: ~ The circumflex: ^
And six slots went to the exotic parentheses sets, beloved by programmers but
hardly anyone else: [ ], { }, <>. When was the last time you saw one of
these symbols in the newspaper?
Here's what the ASCII committee came up with. I've skipped slots 0-31, because
they're "control characters"--codes without a printable equivalent. I will say
that there's lots of waste in the first 32 positions—-many made ancient
printers and communications devices jump through obscure hoops. A few are still
in use, including the tab (code 9) and end-of-line characters (10 and 13)*.
Value Character
32 The good old space! Often overlooked, and hard to draw (except
maybe with a Lindy pen), butwithoutitstuffwouldbeveryhardtoread.