ɪt wʌz ɪnvˈɛntᵻd æz ɐ mˈiːnz tə tɹænsfˈɜː fˈaɪlz ɪn ɐ fˈɔːɹmæt wˌɪtʃ wʊd sɚvˈaɪv kˈæɹɪktɚ sˈɛt tɹænslˈeɪʃən, pɚtˈɪkjʊlɚli ðæt bᵻtwˌiːn ˈæski ænd ðɪ ˈɛbkdɪk ɛŋkˈoʊdɪŋ jˈuːzd ˌɔn ˌaɪbˌiːˈɛm mˈeɪnfɹeɪmz.
It was invented as a means to transfer files in a format which would survive character set translation, particularly that between ASCII and the EBCDIC encoding used on IBM mainframes.