🚀 go-pugleaf

Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> writes:
> Although there were certainly practical considerations, a (un)healthy
> dose of the NIH syndrome certainly wouldn't be inconsistent with IBM's
> behaviour at the time.  Quoting Ted Nelson's _Computer Lib_:
>
>     ASCII and ye shall receive.
>       -- the computer industry
>
>     ASCII not, what your machine can do for you.
>       -- IBM

re:
http://www.garlic.com/~lynn/2018b.html#75 alt.folklore.computers

Bemer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_Bemer

He also served, with Hugh McGregor Ross and others, on the separate
committee which defined the ASCII character codeset in 1960,
contributing several characters which had not previously been used by
computers including the ESCape character, the backslash character, and
the curly bracket characters.[3] As a result he is sometimes known as
The Father of ASCII.[1] 

... snip ...

1963: The debut of ASCII
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9907/06/1963.idg/index.html

"We had over 60 different ways to represent characters in computers. It
was a real Tower of Babel," says Bob Bemer, who was instrumental in
ASCII's development and is widely known as "the father of ASCII."

... snip ...

from "greatest computer goof"
http://www.bobbemer.com/P-BIT.HTM

Consequences

.... 

Although the ASCII work started as a 6-bit code, it soon got to 7-bit,
primarily to accommodate upper and lower case alphabets. That was three
years before the 360 was announced, and IBM was totally aware of it,
especially because they had already decided on the 8-bit byte.

Although some IBM customers would stay with all upper case for a while,
the introduction of lower case would destroy all collating precedent,
and IBM knew that, too. Especially from the STRETCH design in 1958,
where I made a big mistake in setting the collating sequence as
"A-a-B-b-C ..." [2]. Ordering alphabetically in dual case must be a
two-step process -- first on the letter itself, and then on the quality
of the letter (its case).

IBM was in great danger of insurmountably alienating its products from
all others. This might have happened had it not been for several other
standards actions taken by Eric Clamons and his X3.2 (ASCII)
Committee. One was ensuring that the firing order (e.g., bit-to-track
assignment on magnetic tape and other physical media) was identical for
both EBCDIC and ASCII. Another was ensuring that the character content
of both codes was homomorphic -- each had the same set of characters for
content, regardless of their coded assignment. This was done by relating
each to the other through the punch card code assignments, even though
we seldom use cards anymore. We may all be very grateful for that, for
it made a hardware translating chip possible, which is the only reason
360 successors and ASCII peripheral devices can coexist at today's high
speeds.

... snip ...

"Father of ASCII"
http://www.bobbemer.com/FATHEROF.HTM
how ASCII came about
http://www.bobbemer.com/ASCII.HTM
ASCII Characters
http://www.bobbemer.com/BRACES.HTM

-- 
virtualization experience starting Jan1968, online at home since Mar1970