1991: Unicode
[Overview]
First published in January 1991, Unicode is the universal character encoding maintained by the Unicode Consortium. “Unicode provides a unique number for every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the program, no matter what the language.” (excerpt from the website) This double-byte platform-independent encoding provides a basis for the processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language, and any modern software and information technology protocols. Unicode is a component of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specifications.