Scribd
Upload
137 views4 pages

Ascii Code

ASCII is a coding system that represents letters, numbers, and other symbols as binary numbers so they can be stored and transmitted by computers. It assigns a unique 8-bit binary number to each character, with the first bit indicating whether it is a letter or number. For example, the letter S is 01010011 in binary or 83 in decimal ASCII code. Whole phrases can be converted between text and binary using ASCII tables, allowing digital communication and storage of human language.

Uploaded by

Brenda Sabaupan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
137 views4 pages

Ascii Code

ASCII is a coding system that represents letters, numbers, and other symbols as binary numbers so they can be stored and transmitted by computers. It assigns a unique 8-bit binary number to each character, with the first bit indicating whether it is a letter or number. For example, the letter S is 01010011 in binary or 83 in decimal ASCII code. Whole phrases can be converted between text and binary using ASCII tables, allowing digital communication and storage of human language.

Uploaded by

Brenda Sabaupan
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 4

WHAT IS ASCII AND HOW IS IT USED TO CONVERT NUMBERS

AND LETTERS INTO BINARY FORM?

All electronic communications involving computers are expressed in binary


language which involves only two symbols. These are 0 for off and 1 for on.
Since normal communications between humans over large distances is both in
letters and numbers it earlier became necessary to come up with a coding
method capable of handling both cases. The result was a coding system
developed in this country in the early 1960s now known as ASCII(American
Standard Code for Information Interchange). We want here to show how this
code works.

Our starting point is to write down the first few integers and underneath them give
their binary form. Also we add a third row giving the 26 letters of the alphabet
written in sequential order. We summarize this information in the following three
tables -

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
0 10 11 100 101 110 111 1000 1001 1010
A B C D E F G H I J

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
1011 1100 1101 1110 1111 10000 10001 10010 10011 10100
K L M N O P Q R S T

21 22 23 24 25 26
10101 10111 11000 110001 110010 110111
U V W X Y Z

Now the major idea behind ASCII is that we can assign a number for each letter
of the alphabet and then convert it to binary form. The difficulty, as seen from the
above tables, is that one can not yet distinguish between a binary expression
being a number or letter. Certainly, as things stand, 110001 could refer to either
the number 24 or the letter X. Likewise 1000 could be 8 or H. To remedy this
difficulty ASCII lengthens the number of bits for each element to eight and then
replaces the first three digits on the left by 010 to indicate a letter. Thus the letter
M in binary reads 01001101 and S in binary is 01010011. A number has the first
four symbols on the left replaced by 0011. That is, the number 2 is written as
00110010. Using eight elements to represent a letter or number allows extra
space for punctuation marks, small letters, and mathematical operation signs.
The basic idea behind the ASCII coding procedure is that each symbol has a
specific binary number attached to it. The original ASCII coding of 1963 involved
128 characters . Later extensions added several hundred more. If you convert
the binary 01010011 into decimal, one gets the ASCII number of 83. Thus S in
ASCII is 83 which converts to 01010011 in binary. There are available on the
internet numerous conversion tables. One of the best is found at-
http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/number/ascii-hex-bin-dec-converter.htm

This link allows rapid conversion from ASCII to binary to decimal . One recovers
the ASCII symbol by converting the binary. Thus the binary representation
00110111 yields 55 in ASCII and corresponds to the decimal 7. We could of
course have anticipated this result by noting from the above tables that the
ending 111 in binary corresponds to the decimal number 7. Had one changed
the fourth symbol on the left in the binary expansion toy 0 , the expansion would
correspond to the letter G. Whole phrases can be readily converted into binary
form by using the conversion table. So, for instance, the distress signal SOS
would read-

01010011 01001111 01010011

in binary. Although this chain is quite a bit longer than the Morse Code signal-

000 111 000

it is far superior in the sense that eight bit representations allow for the inclusion
of numerous additional symbols . A few of these additional symbols, expressed
in binary, are-

00101011=+ 00101101=- 00101111=/ 00101100=, 00101110=.

00111011=; 00111110=> 00111100=< 00100011=# 01111110=~

00101000=( 00101001=) 00100001=! 00100110=& 00101010=*

Also a space corresponds to 00100000 .

Consider another letter phrase:

TO BE OR NOT TO BE THAT IS THE QUESTION

In binary using ASCII it reads-

01010100 01001111 00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000 01001111


01010010 00100000 01001110 01001111 01010100 00100000 01010100
01001111 00100000 01000010 01000101 00100000 01010100 01001000
01000001 01010100 00100000 01001001 01010011 00100000 01010100
01001000 01000101 00100000 01010001 01010101 01000101 01010011
01010100 01001001 01001111 01001110

You will recognize at once that the grouping of the first eight bits indicates
a letter (010) and from the above tables its extention of 10100 is found in the 20-
T column. Thus the letter is T.

In cryptography one would disguise this batch of elements by multiplying things


by a large random number before sending the encrypted message out to a
receiver( and anyone else who may be listening). Only persons familiar with the
random number being used will be able to decipher the massage by dividing the
encrypted massage by the random number being used. As we will show in an
upcoming article, even certain semi-random numbers may be used for an
effective encryption. For most cryptography applications it is sufficient to deal
only with the thirty six ASCII symbols representing the numbers 0 through 9 and
the capital letters A through Z. A table giving all 36 groups follows-

U.H.Kurzweg
October 8, 2017

You might also like