Delivery-date: Fri, 08 Feb 2002 21:59:24 +0000
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002 15:59:17 -0600 (CST)
Message-Id: <200202082159.g18LxHO11273@shell-1.enteract.com>
From: Eric Fischer <enf@pobox.com>
To: bob@bobbemer.com, jkorpela@cs.tut.fi, Markus.Kuhn@cl.cam.ac.uk,
	eric@danger.com
Subject: Re: History of ASCII char. 96
In-Reply-To: <000f01c1b032$77782360$37e23940@wf.net>
References: <Pine.SOL.4.44.0202072107060.4849-100000@korppi.cs.tut.fi> <000f01c1b032$77782360$37e23940@wf.net>

Thank you for forwarding the question about the grave accent and opening
single quotation mark to me.  I usually follow the comp.std.internat
newsgroup, but I haven't had much time to read Usenet lately so I
missed this thread.

Unfortunately L.L. Griffin's report on the October, 1963 ISO meeting
isn't really an ideal source for early information about this character.
I cited it because this was the meeting where the character was added to
the draft ISO standard, but the report never actually refers to it by
name.  I've scanned it in, though, and also scanned a few others that
may be useful.

It appears to have been at their May 13-15, 1963 meeting that the CCITT
decided that the proposed ISO 7-bit code standard would be suitable for
their needs if a lower case alphabet and five diacritical marks, including
the grave accent, were added to it.  I've scanned the report and put a
copy at

  http://www.enteract.com/~enf/ascii-scans/ccit.html

At the October 29-31 meeting, then, the ISO subcommittee altered the ISO
draft to meet the CCITT requirements, replacing the up-arrow and left-arrow
with diacriticals, adding diacritical meanings to the apostrophe and
quotation mark, and making the number sign a dual for the tilde.  The
scans of this one are at

  http://www.enteract.com/~enf/ascii-scans/iso.html

The character was finally mentioned by name when the second ISO draft
was distributed in December, 1963.  Here it is unambiguously the grave 
accent, with no mention of the opening single quotation mark.  Some
excerpts from it are at

  http://www.enteract.com/~enf/ascii-scans/draft.html

The use of the character as a quotation mark seems to appear only in the
US versions of the standard.  It wouldn't surprise me if this meaning was
added only to justify the replacement of the left-arrow to English speakers
who would have little use for the grave accent.  I'm not sure exactly when
the character, under any name, was added to the US draft standard, but the
earliest reference to the "opening single quotation mark" name that I've
been able to find is in the minutes of the September 22-23, 1964 X3.2.4
meeting.  Scans of those minutes are at

  http://www.enteract.com/~enf/ascii-scans/usa.html

I hope these will be of some use to you.  Please let me know if there is
anything else I can do to help.

Eric