ASCII

Hey guys! Late blog post but it's here. Anyways I wanted to talk about what most people know as emoticons. This would be stuff like happy face : ), winking face ; ), sad face : (, sticking tongue out face, angry face > : O, cool face B ), or the annoying "shaking my head" face -__-. But what I am going to talk about takes this to the next level. Yup, ASCII is a picture written in text. Unfortunately blogger doesn't let me post one without it looking like total crap, so here is a link to a familiar character. This is made using different characters that are spaced out to create an image.

"It _is_ a long tail, certainly," said Alice, looking
                     down with wonder at the Mouse's tail; "but why do you
                     call it sad?" And she kept on puzzling about it while the
                     Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was
                     something like this:----"Fury said to
                               a mouse, That
                                     he met in the
                                          house, `Let
                                              us both go
                                                 to law: _I_
                                                  will prose-
                                                   cute _you_.--
                                                  Come, I'll
                                                 take no de-
                                              nial: We
                                           must have
                                        the trial;
                                     For really
                                   this morn-
                                 ing I've
                                nothing
                               to do.'
                                Said the
                                 mouse to
                                   the cur,
                                      `Such a
                                         trial, dear
                                             sir. With
                                               no jury
                                                or judge,
                                                  would
                                                 be wast-
                                               ing our
                                             breath.'
                                          `I'll be
                                       judge,
                                    I'll be
                                  jury,'
                                said
                               cun-
                               ning
                                old
                                  Fury:
                                   `I'll
                                      try
                                        the
                                         whole
                                          cause,
                                           and
                                          con-
                                        demn
                                    you to
                               death'."

Here is an example from the original book of Alice in Wonderland. It is one of the earliest forms ASCII, but it was made just two years before the typewriter was invented. (>'')>