> On Jan 14, 2025, at 3:45 PM, Frank Leonhardt via cctalk
> <cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote:
>
> ...
> Yeah, I know there were fancy character set machines out there later. Look at
> APL keyboards, for example. ASCII spoiled all the fun.
Fixed in Unicode... :-)
> Baudot, of course, was several domain-specific versions. They didn't even all
> have the same letter/figure shift code, never mind the same symbols in the
> same place. You had to just know what the wierdnesses were on any teleprinter
> that wasn't an original Creed (as supplied by Elliott). I've still got a
> Baudot ASR33 in the shed, although I might have scavenged it for parts for
> the ASCII. Mostly common linkage parts on the Baudot - just fewer of them :-)
That would be an ASR32.
I remember seeing a listing of some of the variations of Baudot. One of them
was the "weather" version, which had a pile of meteorology symbols in the
figures set for use by weather station reporting. There were many versions.
An odd one I remember is the Electrologica X8 console, which has printable
characters for the 000 code point (# for ltrs and * for figures). Not to
mention a figures character the users referred to as "iron cross".
For even more strangeness consider the various flavors of six-bit teleprinter
codes, which were used in the typesetting business. Services like Associated
Press would distribute their news stories using those codes. A special variant
came with a pile of different fractions, for sending stock listings. Those
codes would give you upper and lower case, but there was still a shift code
called "upper rail" or "lower rail", a reference to Linotype line-casting
machines. Upper rail meant italics, as I recall.
paul
