11.a. Why were ASCII and EBCDIC Created?

Computer manufacturers originally devised their own coding schemes:

Bit Sequence	Manufacturer A	Manufacturer B	Manufacturer C
00000000	1	A	NULL
00000001	2	B	Esc
00000010	3	Z	BS
∙∙∙∙	∙∙∙∙	∙∙∙∙	∙∙∙∙
11111110	y	EOF	8
11111111	z	NULL	9

Because there were differences, a committee (ASCII) was formed to develop a common coding scheme so that computers could readily exchange data.