Discover fun and surprising facts about ASCII art, including its history, classic terminals, and the characters behind text art.
Discover interesting and
fun facts about ASCII art
! From early terminals and email culture to modern indie projects and retro demos, these little character-based creations have a history that is way more interesting than it looks at first glance.Fun Facts About ASCII Art
Born in 1963
ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) was first published in 1963, making it over 60 years old!
128 Characters
The original ASCII standard defines exactly 128 characters, including 95 printable characters and 33 control codes.
Star Wars in ASCII
The entire Star Wars Episode IV movie has been recreated in ASCII animation. You can watch it by typing
telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl in your terminal!First Emoticon
The emoticon
:-) was first used in 1982 by computer scientist Scott Fahlman to indicate jokes in online messages.Pronunciation
The word "ASCII" is pronounced "ASK-ee", not "A-S-C-I-I".
Copy/Paste Is a Modern Luxury
In many old systems, moving ASCII art around wasn’t as simple as selecting and pasting. People learned careful spacing, alignment, and manual edits like true text artisans.
Email Art Pioneer
ASCII art became popular in the late 1970s and 1980s as one of the few ways to add visuals to early emails, Usenet, and bulletin board systems.
ASCII Was Graphics Before Graphics
Before graphical user interfaces existed, ASCII art was the only way to display images in software, games, and system messages.
Universal Language
ASCII art transcends language barriers - a picture made of characters can be understood by anyone, anywhere in the world.
Joan G. Stark
Joan G. Stark (jgs) is one of the most famous ASCII artists, best known for her extensive ASCII art collections from the 1990s and early 2000s.
Largest ASCII Art
Some of the largest ASCII art pieces ever created contain millions of characters.
NASA Used ASCII
NASA has relied on ASCII text in software, data transmission, and documentation since the 1960s.
Roguelike Games
Many early video games displayed ASCII characters instead of graphics, including the original "Rogue" which inspired the entire "roguelike" genre.
It Started with Typewriters and Teleprinters
Early ASCII images were created on typewriters, one line at a time. Made a mistake? You had to start over. Ctrl+Z was… an eraser.
Fonts Can Break ASCII Art
ASCII art depends on monospace fonts. Display it in the wrong font or line height,
and a perfect image can instantly fall apart.
It Works Everywhere
ASCII art needs no images, no files, and no downloads. It works in emails, terminals,
source code, chat apps, and even log files.
Retro Never Really Died
What started as a technical limitation is now a creative choice. ASCII art lives on in demos,
indie games, terminals, and modern web projects.
ANSI Art vs ASCII Art
Classic “BBS art” often used extended character sets and color codes (ANSI), while pure ASCII art sticks to the basic ASCII characters. Same vibe—different toolkits.
Monospace Is the Secret Sauce
ASCII art depends on fixed-width fonts. Switch to a proportional font and the entire picture can warp instantly—like a funhouse mirror for text.
Dithering, But With Characters
Image-to-ASCII converters often use dithering-like tricks: mixing different characters to fake gradients and smooth transitions, even when the “palette” is just text.
Your Brain Does the Upscaling
Step back from the screen and ASCII portraits suddenly look sharper. Your brain blends the characters together, like an automatic image enhancer.
ASCII Maps Were a Thing
Early games and tools often displayed maps as characters: walls as #, doors as +, floors as ., and you as @. It was practical—and oddly readable.