cat'ing a binary messes up terminal - why?

[Ben Petering]

Hi list,

I have a query, not important, I'm just curious. Hopefully someone
understands what's happening here.

If I say
$ cat /bin/login

for example, my terminal gets all messed up - i.e. typing '/bin/login'
now appears as

$ /␉␋┼/┌⎺±␋┼

I suppose some kind of character table translation is broken or
something... can someone explain in detail why this happens? I NEED to
know :)

Ben