ASCII stands for American Standard Code for Information Interchange. It is a character encoding standard used for representing text in computers and other devices that use text. Each character, such as letters, numbers, and symbols, is assigned a unique numerical value ranging from 0 to 127. This allows computers to communicate and process text consistently. Originally developed in the 1960s, ASCII has become a foundational element in computer science and programming. It enables the exchange of information between different systems and devices. While newer encoding systems like UTF-8 have emerged, ASCII remains widely used for its simplicity and compatibility.