What exactly is ASCII?

ASCII, which stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange, is a character encoding standard that was developed in the 1960s. It is widely used in computers and electronic devices to represent text and symbols. Basically, ASCII assigns a unique numerical value to each character, allowing computers to understand and display a wide range of characters from different languages and symbols.

ASCII originally included only 128 characters, including basic Latin letters, numbers, punctuation marks, and control characters. However, as technology advanced and the need for more characters arose, extended versions of ASCII were developed, such as the Extended ASCII and Unicode. But let’s focus on the basic ASCII and its values for now.

How does ASCII assign values to characters?

In ASCII, each character is represented by a 7-bit binary number. These binary numbers range from 0000000 to 1111111, which equals 0 to 127 in decimal. For example, the capital letter ‘A’ is represented by the decimal value 65 and its binary equivalent 01000001. Similarly, the lowercase letter ‘a’ has the decimal value 97 and binary value 01100001.

You may wonder why the values are assigned the way they are. Well, ASCII was designed to be compatible with older systems that used 6-bit character encodings. By using 7 bits, ASCII could represent 128 different characters, which was sufficient for most purposes at the time.

What does the ASCII value 60 represent?

Now, let’s dive into the ASCII value of 60. In the ASCII standard, 60 corresponds to the character ‘<‘. Yes, it’s that humble angle bracket often used in programming languages for tags and comparisons. Its decimal value is represented as 00111100 in binary. In the ASCII table below, you can see how 60 is assigned to ‘<‘ along with other common characters.

ASCII Table:

Decimal	Binary	Character
60	00111100	‘<‘
65	01000001	‘A’
97	01100001	‘a’
…	…	…

Fun fact: ASCII art and its connection to ASCII values

One fascinating aspect of ASCII is its connection to ASCII art. ASCII art is a technique that uses ASCII characters to create images, designs, and patterns. It gained popularity in the early days of computing when graphics capabilities were limited.

ASCII art is created by arranging characters in a way that forms a recognizable shape when viewed from a distance. Artists and enthusiasts use the specific ASCII values assigned to characters to manipulate their position, density, and shading to create incredible artwork. So, whether it’s a simple smiley face or an intricate landscape, ASCII art showcases the creativity and ingenuity of using limited resources to produce visually appealing designs.

In conclusion, ASCII is an essential part of modern computing, allowing computers to understand and display a wide range of text and symbols. By assigning unique numerical values to each character, ASCII enables communication and data representation. The ASCII value of 60 corresponds to the character ‘<‘, which is commonly used in programming and markup languages. And through the creativity of ASCII art, we can see how these values can be transformed into beautiful and intricate images. So next time you see an angle bracket, remember its humble ASCII value and the world of possibilities it represents.