Re: [ARSCLIST] The person responds was Thin tape decay

[steven c <stevenc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Richter" <mrichter@xxxxxxx>
> steven c wrote:
> > ----- Original Message ----- 
> > From: "Nigel Champion (FOA ANT)" <n.champion@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> >
> >>And perhaps if Bill Gates had done his globe-trotting at a younger age,
> >
> > today's computers might better accommodate that part of the world's
> > population not resident in the US.
> >
> > Well, suppose he had started work on microcomputers in Taiwan, with the
> > Chinese "alphabet" of 50,000 or so characters! Try to modify a
128-character
> > teletype system to suit THAT...
>
> I'll happily blame Gates for what he did wrong (and credit him for what
> he did right), but the character set isn't his contribution either way.
> ANSI and ASCII are out of the punched-tape era; there were conflicting
> character sets beyond the basic 32 throug 127 before his day.
>
Which is why I said "...modify a 128-character teletype system...!" Back in
1966, when I was in USAF electronics courses, we discussed an old multiplex
TTY set-up...including the 128 characters it could transmit using frequency-
shift keying (for each signal). In fact, those mysterious 0-32 characters
make a lot more sense on a tty system, where they might be used,
than they do as digital text code...

...stevenc
http://users.interlinks.net/stevenc/