What does this code do?

programming
1

The first section appears atop all dreamweaver blank html pages;

"<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC “-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN”
"http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd">"

And the second appears below the head tag;

“<meta http-equiv=“Content-Type” content=“text/html; charset=iso-8859-1”>”

What exaclty are they for? Could anyone break each piece down and explain it for me.

Thanks.