What character encodings were used before 1963?
It is said that the first character encodings, ASCII and EBCDIC, appeared in 1963.
My question: What character encodings preceded them? Did computer process characters before 1963?
In particular, compilers for first high-level programming languages (FORTRAN, Algol, COBOL) appeared before 1963. How did they process characters (source code)? What character encodings did they use?
Solution 1:
Morse code is one encoding that was used before ASCII. After that, the Baudot code appeared:
From Wikipedia:
The Baudot code, a 5-bit encoding, was created by Émile Baudot in 1870, patented in 1874, modified by Donald Murray in 1901, and standardized by CCITT as International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2) in 1930.
From A Brief History of Character Codes:
The next great leap in telegraph technology was a primitive printing telegraph, or "teleprinter," patented by Jean-Maurice-Émile Baudot (1845-1903) in France in 1874. Like Morse's telegraph, it involved the creation of a new character code, the 5-bit Baudot code, which was also the world's first binary character code for processing textual data. Messages encoded in Baudot's code were printed out on narrow two-channel transmission tapes by operators who created them using a special five-key keypad, although in later versions typewriter keyboards that automatically generated the proper five-unit sequences were employed. Another interesting feature of Baudot's teleprinter system was that it was a "multiplex" system that allowed up to six operators to share a single telegraph line using a time division system. This led to a considerable increase in the transmission capacity of a telegraph line. Baudot's system proved to be fairly successful, and it remained in widespread use in the 20th century until it was displaced by the telephone, and, of course, personal computer communications.
After that, Herman Hollerith came up with the concept of punched cards - another form of data/character encoding.
Again from A Brief History of Character Codes (emphasis mine):
The end of the 19th century saw the creation of another character code, this one invented in the United States for the purpose of tabulating census data. It was created by a young American inventor named Herman Hollerith (1860-1929), who was hired by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1880 as a statistician after graduating from Columbia School of Mines in New York in 1879; and it was to have far reaching effects that lasted into the golden era of mainframe computers in the 1970s. Hollerith was none other than the creator of the Hollerith code, a character code for encoding alphanumeric data on the "punched [or punch] card," which introduced one of the first geek expressions to the American masses--"do not fold, spindle, or mutilate," an expression that left many Americans with the impression that computers were soon to take control of their society.
Solution 2:
Since teleprinters and teletypes were used by these earlier machines, I think Baudot codes were used, since they are the native encoding used by most teleprinters:
The Baudot code, invented by Émile Baudot, is a character set predating EBCDIC and ASCII. It was the predecessor to the International Telegraph Alphabet No. 2 (ITA2), the teleprinter code in use until the advent of ASCII.