> The knock-on effect of EBCDIC having room for accented characters would have been the U.S.A. not changing a lot of placenames when the federal government made the GNIS in the 1970s and 1980s, for example.

I don't know about that, it had room for lots of accented characters with code pages. If that went unused, it probably would have also gone unused in the 9 bit version.

> Actual intelligence is needed for this sort of science fiction alternative history construction.

Why? We're basically making a trivia quiz, that benefits memorization far more than intelligence. And you actively don't want to get into the weeds of chaos-theory consequences or you forget the article you're writing.

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p_l 5 days ago | parent [-]

You don't want to switch code pages while processing the data unless you add extra fields to indicate code page, ISO 2022 style (or in fact old baudot shifts style)

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Dylan16807 5 days ago | parent [-]

Wouldn't the government department use the same code page at all times?

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p_l 5 days ago | parent [-]

In EBCDIC world, not exactly, but all the place names being in one codepage is literally a return to why the accented names disappeared :)

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Dylan16807 5 days ago | parent [-]

I need you to explain your argument better.

If you were saying they lost accents outside the main 50 or whatever, I'd understand why 8 bits were a problem. But you're saying they lost accents as a general rule, right? Why did they lose accents that were right there on the US code pages? Why would that reason not extend to a 9 bit semi-universal EBCDIC?

	▲	p_l 5 days ago \| parent [-]
		I read the original mention as trying to claim that it could have been solved by allowance for multiple codepages. But for processing data in one common database, especially back then, you wanted to keep to single variation - main reason for using a different codepage if you didn't work in language other than english was to use APL (later, special variant of US codepage was added to support writing C, which for hysterical raisins wasn't exactly nice to work with in US default EBCDIC codepage). So there would not be an allowance for multiple codepages if only because codepage identifier could cut into 72 characters left on punched card after including sort numbers