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Re:ILLIAC I Programming Manual (1956) [pdf] by pdw on Monday May 12, 2014 @04:34AM (#7731680)
It looks like they took the ITA2 telegraphy code, which has the numbers in normal order but the letters in typewriter order, and re-sorted it so that the letters are alphabetical. That would explain the scrambled numbers, but not the punctuation or "K S N J F L".
Re:ILLIAC I Programming Manual (1956) [pdf] by acqq on Monday May 12, 2014 @04:51AM (#7731717)
The letter codes of ORDVAC and ILLIAC are clearly not ITA2 / USTTY. So we still don't know why they have been selected.