Doug Kerr
Well-known member
One of the things about my age (78 just this past week) is that it gives a remarkable scale to the timeline of life.
To me, the transition of the interior of the telephone network from analog to digital technique is a "modern development", and its morphing from a circuit-switched paradigm to an "IP-based" packet paradigm still seems "of the future".
This coming month will mark the 51th anniversary of the formal introduction of the coded character set ASCII (promulgated 1963.06.17). It is hard today to realize the gigantic "electropolitical" implications of that at the time.
There was a camp in the information processing industry to whom ASCII played the same bête noir role as, in recent times, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act plays to the Republican party. In fact, it was the beginning of the end of an era of information system standards being wholly proprietary creatures of individual large corporations (a change greatly welcomed and encouraged by the US federal government).
I can take no credit for ASCII's emergence. I had not been at all involved in the work as of that time.
The 1963 form of ASCII contained only the upper-case letters (one could consider them, semantically, as "caseless"), along with a big empty "reserved" area exactly the size of the set of lower-case letters. It is hard to imagine today that there was a controversy as to whether to emplace the set of lower-case letters in this handy-sized area, but again recall that there were strange elctropolitical winds blowing through the battle zone.
I joined the work shortly after, and was heavily involved in the "completion" of the code, which was formalized in 1967. The 1968 version, only very slightly different, was made the first US government interagency information processing standard (by edict of President Lyndon B. Johnson).
As with the Affordable Care Act, many were dismissive of this "latest fad in coded character sets", but it has in fact prevailed.
Of course, it was later joined by its semi-legitimate foster siblings. the "extended ASCII code pages", and it was ultimately the spiritual godfather of Unicode (which in fact also gave a firm nod to one of those semi-legitimate foster siblings).
So, ASCII has lasted almost 51 years, and I with it.
Time soon for breakfast. Then Carla and I will "play dress-up" at a sort-of-Renaissance themed block party in "downtown" Alamogordo. I have no "renaissance" garb, so I will go in my dress kilt outfit.
Best regards,
Doug
To me, the transition of the interior of the telephone network from analog to digital technique is a "modern development", and its morphing from a circuit-switched paradigm to an "IP-based" packet paradigm still seems "of the future".
This coming month will mark the 51th anniversary of the formal introduction of the coded character set ASCII (promulgated 1963.06.17). It is hard today to realize the gigantic "electropolitical" implications of that at the time.
There was a camp in the information processing industry to whom ASCII played the same bête noir role as, in recent times, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act plays to the Republican party. In fact, it was the beginning of the end of an era of information system standards being wholly proprietary creatures of individual large corporations (a change greatly welcomed and encouraged by the US federal government).
I can take no credit for ASCII's emergence. I had not been at all involved in the work as of that time.
The 1963 form of ASCII contained only the upper-case letters (one could consider them, semantically, as "caseless"), along with a big empty "reserved" area exactly the size of the set of lower-case letters. It is hard to imagine today that there was a controversy as to whether to emplace the set of lower-case letters in this handy-sized area, but again recall that there were strange elctropolitical winds blowing through the battle zone.
I joined the work shortly after, and was heavily involved in the "completion" of the code, which was formalized in 1967. The 1968 version, only very slightly different, was made the first US government interagency information processing standard (by edict of President Lyndon B. Johnson).
As with the Affordable Care Act, many were dismissive of this "latest fad in coded character sets", but it has in fact prevailed.
Of course, it was later joined by its semi-legitimate foster siblings. the "extended ASCII code pages", and it was ultimately the spiritual godfather of Unicode (which in fact also gave a firm nod to one of those semi-legitimate foster siblings).
So, ASCII has lasted almost 51 years, and I with it.
Time soon for breakfast. Then Carla and I will "play dress-up" at a sort-of-Renaissance themed block party in "downtown" Alamogordo. I have no "renaissance" garb, so I will go in my dress kilt outfit.
Best regards,
Doug