An article about how text art used to be done back in 1948:
Seeing a TV show as a child, where Rolf Harris was shown how to do something similar to that flower, is what got me started on this whole ASCII art thing. 
Ascgen 2
Ascii Generator 2 – Image to Text Conversion Software
Nice! I’ve been looking for the cyber Paul Hadley [soft
] which can do this job automaticaly
Interesting, the text art(ASCII art) phenomenon can be traced back to the 40s and surely further back in time…
I’m grateful that you’ve seen it and you got attached to the topic, otherwise there wouldn’t be Ascgen2!
Super! I found what I wanted! =)
My typing machine pics
http://cs10027.vkontakte.ru/u6882681/112344281/z_d67a5107.jpg
and
http://cs10027.vkontakte.ru/u6882681/112344281/z_34a56de1.jpg
=)