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Article: Codes
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- Computer Sciences
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Codes
The first widely used character code was the Morse Code, developed in 1838 by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791
–
1872). This two-symbol, dot-and-dash code is capable of representing the characters of the alphabet by varying the number of symbols between one and four. If one considers the symbols to be similiar to
bits
, then the number character set, 0 to 9, uses 1 to 5 bits.
In 1874 Jean-Maurice
É
mile Baudot (1845
–
1903) received a patent for a printing telegraph. He also introduced a code using 5 bits per character. Five bits can be combined in 32 different ways, enough for uppercase letters and a few control characters. To include the number set, Baudot devised a shift ...