ASCII Code - American Standard Code for Information Interchange

American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) was discussed in many computer textbooks at one time, but today you may not see it in a textbook and you can research a great deal more about this on the internet. Here, we only want to discuss a small part of this code. In general, one BYTE of computer information is a group of 8 bits. A bit is equal to one on/off switch, so a BYTE is a group of 8 switches in the computer. The ASCII code was essentially an agreement that a particular group of 8 bits with each bit possibly in an on or off state could represent a particular character on a keyboard.

Every time you press a key you are in effect creating a unique set of 8 bits of on/off switches, but ASCII code was set to work effectively with only 7 bits. It was sufficient to use only 7 bits to convey all the desired key strokes for text, but not for every possible function. In any case a group for example: 100 0001 in binary code ASCII represents the capital letter "A". If for example every letter of the alphabet both upper and lower case uses a leading "1" in a group of 8 bits then the leading "1" does not supply any unique information, so it is the remaining 7 bits that actually determines the actual ASCII character it represents. Each character needed for typical text was assigned a unique binary code and by agreement most computer makers would then make ASCII encoding and decoding part of their programming. There was resistance by computer makers, because they did not want to be forced into any compliance with the competition in the computer marketplace. The standardization proponents hoped that this standardization would allow text that was written in a word processor on one computer platform could be saved in ASCII code which could then be used by another computer platform. This was an important step toward compatibility from system to system, but in the process of conversion special functions in the text like bold, underline, italics, centering may not have been encoded in the "save" process. It was common for many features of the original text would be lost in the conversion to ASCII code.

Eventually the major players in the computer marketplace were forced into accepting some cross compatibility. This was especially obvious with the battle between the Microsoft (TM) users and the (Apple (TM) computer makers. Each tried to maintain their unique niche, but to become really competitive they were eventually forced to compete more directly.

In spite of this problem, ASCII code did allow for text to be moved from platform to platform. Eventually more effective programs were designed to save text on one platform into formats that could be moved from one platform to another with little or no loss of the formatting features that were lost because of the limitations in scope of ASCII code.

Even today, there are situations in which it might be advisable to save a given piece of text in ASCII code and worry about reformatting of the text later although this is less likely. Knowing ASCII codes is occassionally still important in programming where you may use an ASCII code in a computer program to cause the computer to do something that may be difficult or impossible to get it to do without the use of an ASCII code. Because most average computer users today have no need to know ASCII code it is no wonder that it has been removed from many "Introduction to Computer" textbooks recently published.