Why encoding text mattered to computers

In today's episode we take a long hard look at the telegraph, and try to see how character encoding developed. We are dealing with 100% pre-computing technology, but there are some shocking similarities to later digital systems. Selected Sources: https://archive.org/details/electrictelegrap00highrich/page/2/mode/2up - Early history of the electric telegraph http://www.samhallas.co.uk/repository/telegraph/b6_baudot_multiplex.pdf - 1934 pamphlet on the Baudot telegraph https://ia800708.us.archive.org/view_archive.php?archive=/22/items/crossref-pre-1909-scholarly-works/10.1049%252Fjiee-1.1901.0058.zip&file=10.1049%252Fjiee-1.1905.0034.pdf - Murray's comprehensive article on telegraphy