On Wed, 5 Dec 2007 08:52:20 -0500, "D.Duck" wrote:

I think the confusion here is comparing the Teletype machines and the IBM
machine. The Teletype Model 28 is 5 bit baudot and the Teletype Model 33/35
is 8 bit ASCII.

That's my recollection also. The model 28s used a "mode shift" key or
some such to effectively double the character set. If the "mode
shift" code arrived garbled, the receiving machine would miss
everything that followed and print gibberish.