To encode 70 different characters in binary form, we need to determine the minimal number of total bits required. We can calculate this by finding the smallest power of 2 that is greater than or equal to 70.
The smallest power of 2 that is greater than or equal to 70 is 2^7, which equals 128. Therefore, we need 7 bits to encode 70 different characters.
Now, let's calculate the additional number of characters that could be encoded if we want to maximize the encoding capacity:
The maximum number of characters that can be encoded with 7 bits is 2^7, which equals 128. However, since we have already used 70 characters, we can encode an additional number of characters equal to 128 - 70 = 58.
Therefore, if we want to maximize the encoding capacity, we could encode 58 more characters using the remaining bits.