Display code is the 6-bit character set used by many computer systems manufactured by Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation

Control Data Corporation was a supercomputer firm. For most of the 1960s, it built the fastest computers in the world by far, only losing that crown in the 1970s after Seymour Cray left the company to found Cray Research, Inc....

, notably the CDC 6600

CDC 6600

The CDC 6600 was a mainframe computer from Control Data Corporation, first delivered in 1964. It is generally considered to be the first successful supercomputer, outperforming its fastest predecessor, IBM 7030 Stretch, by about three times...

 in 1964. The CDC 6000 series

CDC 6000 series

The CDC 6000 series was a family of mainframe computers manufactured by Control Data Corporation in the 1960s. It consisted of CDC 6400, CDC 6500, CDC 6600 and CDC 6700 computers, which all were extremely rapid and efficient for their time...

, and their followons, had 60 bit words. As such, typical usage packed 10 characters per word.

There were several variations of display code, notably the 63-character character set, and the 64-character character set. There were also 'CDC graphic' and 'ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

 graphic' variants of both the 63- and 64-character sets. The choice between 63- or 64-character character set, and between CDC or ASCII graphic was site-selectable. Generally, early CDC customers started out with the 63-character character set, and CDC graphic print trains on their line printer

Line printer

The line printer is a form of high speed impact printer in which one line of type is printed at a time. They are mostly associated with the early days of computing, but the technology is still in use...

s. As time-sharing became prevalent, almost all sites used the ASCII variant - so that line printer output would match interactive usage. Later CDC customers were also more likely to use the 64-character character set.

A later variation, called 6/12 display code, was used in the Kronos and NOS

NOS (software)

NOS was an operating system with time-sharing capabilities, written by Control Data Corporation in the 1970s....

 timesharing systems in order to support full ASCII

ASCII

The American Standard Code for Information Interchange is a character-encoding scheme based on the ordering of the English alphabet. ASCII codes represent text in computers, communications equipment, and other devices that use text...

 capabilities. In 6/12 mode, an escape character (the circumflex, octal 76) would indicate that the following letter was lower case. Thus, upper case and other characters were 6 bits in length, and lower case characters were 12 bits in length.

The PLATO system used a further variant of 6/12 display code. Noting that lower case letters were most common in typical PLATO usage, the roles were reversed. Lower case letters were the norm, and the escape character preceded upper case letters.

The typical text file format used a zero-byte

Byte

The byte is a unit of digital information in computing and telecommunications that most commonly consists of eight bits. Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a single character of text in a computer and for this reason it is the basic addressable element in many computer...

terminator to signify the end of each record. The zero-byte terminator was indicated by, at least, the final twelve bits of a 60-bit word being set to zero. The terminator could actually be anywhere from 12- to 66-bits long - depending on the length of the record. This caused an ambiguity in the 64-character character set, when a colon character needed to be the final character in a record. In such cases a blank character was typically appended to the record after the trailing colon.

Display code characters (64-character character set version)

ASCII CDC Binary Decimal Octal Graphic Graphic  Name  000 000 0 00 : : colon 000 001 1 01 A A   000 010 2 02 B B   000 011 3 03 C C   000 100 4 04 D D   000 101 5 05 E E   000 110 6 06 F F   000 111 7 07 G G   001 000 8 10 H H   001 001 9 11 I I   001 010 10 12 J J   001 011 11 13 K K   001 100 12 14 L L   001 101 13 15 M M   001 110 14 16 N N   001 111 15 17 O O   010 000 16 20 P P   010 001 17 21 Q Q   010 010 18 22 R R   010 011 19 23 S S   010 100 20 24 T T   010 101 21 25 U U   010 110 22 26 V V   010 111 23 27 W W   011 000 24 30 X X   011 001 25 31 Y Y   011 010 26 32 Z Z   011 011 27 33 0 0   011 100 28 34 1 1   011 101 29 35 2 2   011 110 30 36 3 3   011 111 31 37 4 4

ASCII CDC Binary Decimal Octal Graphic Graphic  Name  100 000 32 40 5 5   100 001 33 41 6 6   100 010 34 42 7 7   100 011 35 43 8 8   100 100 36 44 9 9   100 101 37 45 + +   100 110 38 46 - -   100 111 39 47 * *   101 000 40 50 / /   101 001 41 51 ( (   101 010 42 52 ) )   101 011 43 53 $ $   101 100 44 54 = =   101 101 45 55     blank 101 110 46 56 , ,   101 111 47 57 . .   110 000 48 60 # ≡ equiv 110 001 49 61 [ [   110 010 50 62 ] ]   110 011 51 63 % % 110 100 52 64 " ≠ not eq 110 101 53 65 _ → concat 110 110 54 66 ! ∨ log OR 110 111 55 67 & ∧ log AND 111 000 56 70 ' ↑ super 111 001 57 71 ? ↓ sub 111 010 58 72 < <   111 011 59 73 > >   111 100 60 74 @ ≤   111 101 61 75 \ ≥   111 110 62 76 ^ ¬ NOT 111 111 63 77 ; ;

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