In the ‘60s, the US federal government saw a need for a unified standard for digitally encoding information. Lyndon Johnson’s 1968 executive order on computer standards directed federal agencies to convert all of their databases to the new character encoding standard: the American Standard Code for Information Interchange, or ASCII. While now a universal standard, records from the Central Intelligence Agency archives document decades of reluctance and frustration from the technicians actually responsible for making the change happen.

Whether you find yourself venturing forth or just want to bone up on your hobo history, the NSA has a surprisingly thorough guide to all the pictographs used by those relying on the kindness of strangers during the Great Depression.

Starting today, MuckRock is now free open source software, licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License for anyone to read, use, and modify.