ASCII

ASCII (ⁱ/ˈæski/ ASS-kee), abbreviated from American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character-encoding scheme (the IANA prefers the name US-ASCII). ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text. Most modern character-encoding schemes are based on ASCII, though they support many additional characters. ASCII was the most common character encoding on the World Wide Web until December 2007, when it was surpassed by UTF-8, which includes ASCII as a subset.

ASCII developed from telegraphic codes. Its first commercial use was as a seven-bit teleprinter code promoted by Bell data services. Work on the ASCII standard began on October 6, 1960, with the first meeting of the American Standards Association's (ASA) X3.2 subcommittee. The first edition of the standard was published during 1963, underwent a major revision during 1967, and experienced its most recent update during 1986. Compared to earlier telegraph codes, the proposed Bell code and ASCII were both ordered for more convenient sorting (i.e., alphabetization) of lists, and added features for devices other than teleprinters.

3568 ASCII

3568 ASCII is a small main belt asteroid discovered by Marguerite Laugier on October 17, 1936.

It was named (long after its discovery) in honor of the ASCII character encoding system that was used by most computers. The name was proposed by Syuichi Nakano, who re-discovered this asteroid during his stay at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory; a stay which was partially funded by articles he wrote for the principal Japanese microcomputer magazine, ASCII.

References

External links

Bell character

A bell code (sometimes bell character) is a device control code originally sent to ring a small electromechanical bell on tickers and other teleprinters and teletypewriters to alert operators at the other end of the line, often of an incoming message. Though tickers punched the bell codes into their tapes, printers generally do not print a character when the bell code is received. Bell codes are usually represented by the label "BEL". They have been used since 1870 (initially in Baudot code).

To maintain backward compatibility, video display terminals (VDTs) that replaced teletypewriters included speakers or buzzers to perform the same function, as did the personal computers that followed. Modern terminal emulators often integrate the warnings to the desktop environment (e.g., the Mac OS X Terminal will play the system warning sound) and also often offer a silent visual bell feature that flashes the terminal window briefly.

Representations

In ASCII and Unicode the character with the value 7 is BEL. It can be referred to as control-G or ^G in caret notation. Unicode also includes a character for the visual representation of the bell code, "symbol for bell" (␇) at U+2407.

ASCII (squat)

The Amsterdam Subversive Center for Information Interchange (ASCII) was a squatted communication laboratory in the Dutch city of Amsterdam. The first incarnation was formed in 1999 and based at the Herengracht. The lab then moved to the following locations: Jodenbreestraat, Kinkerstraat, Kostverlorenkade, Wibautstraat and Javastraat (52°21′49″N 4°56′3″E / 52.36361°N 4.93417°E / 52.36361; 4.93417).

ASCII became legalised when it moved into Jodenbreestraat 24 in January 2000, alongside the radical bookshop Fort van Sjakoo, but started squatting again when faced with a 900% rent increase.

The original aim was to provide a free internet work space for activists and squatters and to promote Open Source operating systems such as Linux and free software programs such as OpenOffice.org and Mozilla. Members of the collective scavenged and rebuilt computers from trash. In 2005, ASCII was involved with a plan to set up free community wireless internet access across Amsterdam. In 2006 Javastraat was evicted and the group declared a shift towards being a hacklab rather than having a physical space.

ASCII (disambiguation)

ASCII is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange.

ASCII may also refer to:

See also

ASCII Corporation

ASCII Corporation (株式会社アスキー, Kabushiki kaisha Asukī) was a publishing company based in Tokyo, Japan. It became a subsidiary of Kadokawa Group Holdings in 2004, and merged with another Kadokawa subsidiary MediaWorks on April 1, 2008, and became ASCII Media Works. The company published Monthly ASCII as the main publication.

History

1977–1990: Founding and first projects

ASCII was founded in 1977 by Kazuhiko Nishi and Keiichiro Tsukamoto. Originally a publisher of a magazine with the same name ASCII, talks between Bill Gates and Nishi led to a creation of Microsoft's first overseas sales office, ASCII Microsoft, in 1979. Nishi was also known for being the creator of the MSX in 1983, an 8 bits standard computers well known in the former USSR and Japan. In 1984, ASCII engaged itself in semiconductor business, followed by a further expansion into commercial online service in 1985 under the brand of ASCII-NET. As the popularity of home video game systems soared in the 1980s, ASCII became active in the development and publishing of software and peripherals for popular consoles such as the Family Computer and Mega Drive. After Microsoft's public stock offering in 1986, ASCII Microsoft was dissolved. At around the same time, the company was also obliged to reform itself as a result of its aggressive diversification in the first half of the 1980s. The company went public in 1989.