binary coding schemes

Now let us consider an important question. How are characters represented as 0s and 2s in the computer? The answer is in the use of binary coding schemes. Two of the most popular binary coding schemes use eight bits or one byte. These two codes are ASCII and EBCDIC. A recently developed code, Unicode(UTF-9), uses sixteen bits.
ASCII: ASCII, pronounced “as – key”, stands for American standard code for information interchange. This is the most widely used binary code for microcomputers.
EBCDIC: EBCDIC, pronounce “eb-see-dick”, stands for extended binary coded decimal interchange code. It was developed by IBM and is used primarily for large computers.
UNICODE: Unicode is a 16-bit code designed to support international languages like Chinese and Japanese. These languages have too many characters to be represented by the eight-bit ASCII and EBCDIC codes.
When you press a key on the keyboard, a character is automatically converted into a series of electronic pulses that the system can recognize. For example, pressing the number 3 on a keyboard causes and electronic signal to the microcomputer’s system unit where it is converted to the ASCII code of 0011 0011.
Coding schemes are particularly important to computer specialists for tracking down errors and other types of problems. But why are coding schemes important to end user? There are several reasons. One of the, most important is that the data created by a computer system using one coding scheme cannot be directly accessed and used by another computer system using a different coding scheme. Generally, this is not a problem if both computers are microcomputers since both would most likely use ASCII code. And most microcomputer applications store data using this code. However, problems occur when data is shared between microcomputers and larger computers that use EBCDIC code. The data must be translated from one coding scheme to the other before processing can begin. Fortunately, special conversion programs are available to help with this translation.