For example: how was the letter A given the binary code of “01000001”? (I really don’t know anything about this but I’m interested)
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#ELI5
[You know what Morse Code is](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J8YcQETyTw)?
For a while, we could only communicate long distances with Morse Code. Basically, a dude pressing a button that makes a sound. I could give it a long press or a short press. Beep bip bip beeeep!
How the heck do I communicate with someone on the other side, if all I’m sending is beeps?
Well, we’d have to get together and agree that “bip bip bip” means the letter S and “beeep beeep beeep” means the letter O.
So everyone who wanted to talk Morse Code had to agree on what the beeps mean.
You’ve heard it said many times that computers talk in 1s and 0s.
When all you can send is 1s and 0s, how the heck do you communicate with someone?
Well, just like Morse Code, people got together and agreed that 010010 means A and 101000 means B, and so on.
Bottom line, a bunch of computer people (manufacturers, software engineers, scientists) got together and proposed a STANDARD. Like a dictionary. Like a secret key decoder.
How was 010001 chosen as A? It doesn’t really matter, does it? It doesn’t really have to have any rhyme or reason, as long as everyone agrees to the standard. Right?
The standard was called [ASCII](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII). It stands for American **Standard Code for Information Interchange**. That makes sense, right? It’s a standard for communicating with 1s and 0s.
There’s some history at that link, but it’s kind of boring.
It’s not the only standard, by far! There’s others, like [EBCDIC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBCDIC), and [Unicode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode).
Both parties communicating have to agree on which standard they want to use.
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