(Excerpts from a message dated 09-15-99, Roy J. Tellason to Murray
Lesser)

Hi Roy--

 ML> All my previous programming experience was on either 6-bit or 
 ML> 8-bit machines, none of which used any version of ASCII.

RT>What used six bits?

    The early 6-bit IBM machines I am most familiar with are the 650,
the 305 (I was the system architect on this system, announced in 1956),
the 700 series, the 1400 series, and the 7000 series.  In general, all
"mainframes" introduced prior to 1964, by all manufacturers, used a
6-bit character set.  For most "scientific" computers, addressing was by
36-bit word containing six characters; the "commercial" computers
addressed to the character.

 ML> AFAIAC, the convenience of one-bit differentiation between 
 ML> upper- and lower-case characters doesn't make up for the 
 ML> inconvenience of dealing with the stupid ASCII collating 
 ML> sequence (that interspersed the special characters within the 
 ML> alphabetic characters.) 

RT>If you were going to specify a collating sequence,  how would _you_
  >do it?

     More or less the same as the IBM 8-bit character set EBCDIC
(Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code) has done it since the
S/360 family in 1964.  All alpha characters are contiguous, with the
special characters having a grouping of their own, rather than being in
several groups scattered between portions of the alphabet.

    Regards,

        --Murray

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 * MR/2 2.25 #120 * Computers eliminate spare time.

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