Communications
Revolution 		Communications
Networks 		Optical
Fibres 		Photonic
Devices 		Future of
Communications 		Credits

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Representing Text
The problem was solved in 1838 by Samuel Morse with the Morse code. Each letter is represented by a combination of short and long pulses.

Computers do not communicate in Morse but they use a code. Of all the codes devised by computer scientists, the most popular is the American Standard Code for Information Interchange code or ASCII code.

Each character is represented by 7 bits. Up to 128 characters can be represented in ASCII:
  • the first 31 characters are special control characters
  • the next 96 characters are reserved for the letters a to z, A to Z, as well the character numbers 0 to 9 and some punctuation marks. 
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    The ASCII code is partly shown in the next page with its decimal and binary values.
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