Why HTTP protocol is designed in plain text way?

Question

Yesterday, I have a discussion with my colleagues about HTTP. It is asked why HTTP is designed in plain text way. Surely, it can be designed in binary way just like TCP prot

Answer 1

Historically, it all starts from RFC822 (STANDARD FOR THE FORMAT OF ARPA INTERNET TEXT MESSAGES), whose latest version is RFC5322 (Internet Message Format). SMTP (RFC 821) was one of the most popular protocol based on RFC822. And, HTTP was born out of SMTP (your mail protocol).