elch

As for the name, the acronym ASCII comes from the 1963 version (American Standard Code for Information Interchange). Later in 1966, ASA became USASI, and the official name was changed to USASCII, with ASCII as an acceptable alternative abbreviation. Later still, in 1969, USASI changed its name once again to ANSI, and an attempt was made to rename it ANSCII, but this did not catch on, and ASCII returned as the official name.

As for this 8-bit extension (not seven-bit code proposed by the ISO), perhaps they were referring to ECMA-35, the first version of which was published in December 1971? Or perhaps other proposals mentioned in the brief history. Of course, it seems that ASCII - regardless of the version - served as the basis for these extensions.

Because eight rather than six bits are used to represent a. character, up to 256 possible characters could be represented in the Extended Binary Coded Decimal Interchange Code (EBCDIC) shown in Figure 7. Except for certain teleprocessing equipment, the code that makes use of characters is either EBCDIC or an eight-bit extension of a seven-bit code proposed by the International Standards Organization.