Single-Byte Encoding Systems

ANSI X3.4-1967 (ASCII-1967) went on to be adopted as an international standard, first by the European Computer Manufacturers' Association as ECMA-6 (which actually came out in 1965, two years before the updated version of ANSI X3.4), and then by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO 646 in 1972. (ISO serves as an umbrella organization for most national standards bodies and generally creates international standards by taking various national standards, modifying them to be more palatable to an international audience, and republishing them as international standards.)

A few interesting things happened to ASCII on its way to turning into ISO 646. First, it formalized a system for applying the ...

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