ABSTRACT
At the onset of the computing era, computers were designed and built with particular applications in mind. For example, the Standards Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC) was built at National Bureau of Standards (NBS) in the late 1940s principally to handle certain classes of mathematical problems. In 1968, United States of America Standards Institute (USASI) published the 7-bit American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII). In November 1968, NBS sealed the fate of ASCII by adopting it as its first Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS). This standard, published as FIPS Pub 1, Code for Information Interchange, and issued under the signature of President Lyndon Johnson, specified a code and character set for use in Federal information processing systems, communications systems, and associated equipment. The endorsement of the Federal government, then the largest purchaser of computer equipment, was probably the single most important reason for the subsequent wide adoption of ASCII.
