| MIME / IANA | IBM437 |
|---|---|
| Alias(es) | cp437, 437, csPC8CodePage437,[1] OEM-US |
| Languages | English,German,Swedish |
| Classification | Extended ASCII,OEM code page |
| Extends | US-ASCII |
| Other related encodings | Code page 850,CWI-2 |
Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is thecharacter set of the originalIBM PC (personal computer).[2] It is also known asCP437,OEM-US,OEM 437,[3]PC-8,[4] orMS-DOS Latin US.[5] The set includes all printableASCII characters as well as some accented letters (diacritics), Greek letters, icons, and line-drawing symbols. It is sometimes referred to as the "OEM font" or "high ASCII", or as "extended ASCII"[4] (one of many mutually incompatible ASCII extensions).
This character set remains the primary set in the core of anyEGA andVGA-compatible graphics card. As such, text shown when a PC reboots, before fonts can be loaded and rendered, is typically rendered using this character set.[note 1] Many file formats developed at the time of the IBM PC are based on code page 437 as well.
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The original IBM PC contained this font as a 9×14 pixels-per-character font stored in theROM of theIBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and an 8×8 pixels-per-character font of theColor Graphics Adapter (CGA) cards.[citation needed] TheIBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) contained an 8×14 pixels-per-character version, and theVGA contained a 9×16 version.[citation needed]
All these display adapters have text modes in which each character cell contains an8-bit charactercode point (seedetails), giving 256 possible values for graphic characters. All 256 codes were assigned a graphical character in ROM, including the codes from 0 to 31 that were reserved in ASCII for non-graphical control characters.
Various Eastern European PCs[which?] used different character sets, sometimes user-selectable via jumpers or CMOS setup. These sets were designed to match 437 as much as possible, for instance sharing the code points for many of the line-drawing characters, while still allowing text in a local language to be displayed.
A legacy of code page 437 is the number combinations used in WindowsAlt codes.[6][7][8] A DOS user could enter a character by holding down theAlt key and entering the character code on thenumpad[6] and many users memorized the numbers needed for CP437 (or for the similarCP850). Although Microsoft Windows used different character sets such asCP1252, the original numbers were emulated so users could continue to use them; Microsoft added the ability to type a code from the Windows character set by typing 0 before the digits.[6][9]
The following tables show code page 437. Each character is shown with its equivalentUnicode code point (when it is not equal to the character's code). Atooltip, generally available only when one points to the immediate left of the character, shows the Unicode code point name and the decimalAlt code. See also the notes below, as there are multiple equivalent Unicode characters for some code points.
Although the ROM provides a graphic for all 256 different possible 8-bit codes, someAPIs will not print some code points, in particular the range 0-31 and the code at 127.[10] Instead, they will interpret them as control characters. For instance, many methods of outputting text on the original IBM PC would interprethex codes 07, 08, 0A, and 0D asBEL,BS,LF, andCR, respectively. Many printers were also unable to print these characters.
| 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | A | B | C | D | E | F | |
| 0x 0 | NUL[a] | ☺︎ 263A | ☻ 263B | ♥︎ 2665 | ♦︎ 2666 | ♣︎ 2663 | ♠︎ 2660 | • 2022 | ◘ 25D8 | ○ 25CB | ◙ 25D9 | ♂︎ 2642 | ♀︎ 2640 | ♪ 266A | ♫[b] 266B | ☼ 263C |
| 1x 16 | ► 25BA | ◄ 25C4 | ↕︎ 2195 | ‼︎ 203C | ¶ 00B6 | § 00A7 | ▬ 25AC | ↨ 21A8 | ↑ 2191 | ↓ 2193 | → 2192 | ← 2190 | ∟ 221F | ↔︎ 2194 | ▲ 25B2 | ▼ 25BC |
| 2x 32 | SP | ! | " | # | $ | % | & | ' | ( | ) | * | + | , | - | . | / |
| 3x 48 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | : | ; | < | = | > | ? |
| 4x 64 | @ | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O |
| 5x 80 | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | [ | \ | ] | ^ | _ |
| 6x 96 | ` | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o |
| 7x 112 | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | { | |[c] | } | ~ | ⌂[d] 2302 |
| 8x 128 | Ç 00C7 | ü 00FC | é 00E9 | â 00E2 | ä 00E4 | à 00E0 | å 00E5 | ç 00E7 | ê 00EA | ë 00EB | è 00E8 | ï 00EF | î 00EE | ì 00EC | Ä 00C4 | Å 00C5 |
| 9x 144 | É 00C9 | æ 00E6 | Æ 00C6 | ô 00F4 | ö 00F6 | ò 00F2 | û 00FB | ù 00F9 | ÿ 00FF | Ö 00D6 | Ü 00DC | ¢ 00A2 | £ 00A3 | ¥ 00A5 | ₧ 20A7 | ƒ 0192 |
| Ax 160 | á 00E1 | í 00ED | ó 00F3 | ú 00FA | ñ 00F1 | Ñ 00D1 | ª 00AA | º 00BA | ¿ 00BF | ⌐ 2310 | ¬ 00AC | ½ 00BD | ¼ 00BC | ¡ 00A1 | « 00AB | » 00BB |
| Bx 176 | ░ 2591 | ▒ 2592 | ▓ 2593 | │[e] 2502 | ┤ 2524 | ╡ 2561 | ╢ 2562 | ╖ 2556 | ╕ 2555 | ╣ 2563 | ║ 2551 | ╗ 2557 | ╝ 255D | ╜ 255C | ╛ 255B | ┐ 2510 |
| Cx 192 | └ 2514 | ┴ 2534 | ┬ 252C | ├ 251C | ─ 2500 | ┼ 253C | ╞ 255E | ╟ 255F | ╚ 255A | ╔ 2554 | ╩ 2569 | ╦ 2566 | ╠ 2560 | ═ 2550 | ╬ 256C | ╧ 2567 |
| Dx 208 | ╨ 2568 | ╤ 2564 | ╥ 2565 | ╙ 2559 | ╘ 2558 | ╒ 2552 | ╓ 2553 | ╫ 256B | ╪ 256A | ┘ 2518 | ┌ 250C | █ 2588 | ▄ 2584 | ▌ 258C | ▐ 2590 | ▀ 2580 |
| Ex 224 | α 03B1 | ß[f] 00DF | Γ 0393 | π[g] 03C0 | Σ[h] 03A3 | σ 03C3 | µ[i] 00B5 | τ 03C4 | Φ 03A6 | Θ[j] 0398 | Ω[k] 03A9 | δ[l] 03B4 | ∞ 221E | φ[m] 03C6 | ε[n] 03B5 | ∩ 2229 |
| Fx 240 | ≡ 2261 | ± 00B1 | ≥ 2265 | ≤ 2264 | ⌠[o] 2320 | ⌡ 2321 | ÷ 00F7 | ≈ 2248 | ° 00B0 | ∙[p] 2219 | · 00B7 | √[q] 221A | ⁿ 207F | ² 00B2 | ■ 25A0 | NBSP[r] 00A0 |
When translating to Unicode some codes do not have a unique, single Unicode equivalent; the correct choice may depend upon context.

The repertoire of code page 437 was taken from the character set ofWang word-processing machines, according toBill Gates in an interview with Gates andPaul Allen that appeared in the 2 October 1995 edition ofFortune Magazine:
"... We were also fascinated by dedicated word processors from Wang, because we believed that general-purpose machines could do that just as well. That's why, when it came time to design the keyboard for the IBM PC, we put the funny Wang character set into the machine—you know, smiley faces and boxes and triangles and stuff. We were thinking we'd like to do a clone of Wang word-processing software someday."
According to an interview withDavid J. Bradley (developer of the PC'sROM-BIOS) the characters were decided upon during a four-hour meeting on a plane trip from Seattle to Atlanta by Andy Saenz (responsible for the video card), Lew Eggebrecht (chief engineer for the PC) and himself.[21]
The selection of graphic characters has some internal logic:
Most fonts forMicrosoft Windows include the special graphic characters at the Unicode indexes shown, as they are part of theWGL4 set that Microsoft encourages font designers to support. (The monospaced raster font familyTerminal was an early font that replicated all code page 437 characters, at least at some resolutions.) To draw these characters directly from these code points, aMicrosoft Windows font called MS Linedraw[24] replicates all of the code page 437 characters, thus providing one way to display DOS text on a modern Windows machine as it was shown in DOS, with limitations.[25]
Code page 1055, also known as HP symbol set 0L,[26] is a subset which includes the box-drawing, half-blocks, black circles (the black circle replaces the bullet, which replaces the middle dot in this code page), and black square, and moves them to the upper half; the space is also included.[27]
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Code page 437 has a series of international characters, mainly values 128 to 175 (80hex to AFhex). However, it only covers a few major Western European languages in full, includingEnglish,German andSwedish,[note 2] and so lacks several characters (mostly capital letters) important to many major Western European languages:
Along with thecent (¢),pound sterling (£) andyen/yuan (¥) currency symbols, it has a couple of former European currency symbols: theflorin (ƒ, Netherlands) and thepeseta (₧, Spain). The presence of the last is unusual, since the Spanish peseta was never an internationally relevant currency, and also never had a symbol of its own; it was simply abbreviated as "Pt", "Pta", "Pts", or "Ptas". Spanish models of theIBM electric typewriter, however, also had a single position devoted to it.
Later DOS character sets, such ascode page 850 (DOS Latin-1), code page 852 (DOS Central-European) andcode page 737 (DOS Greek), filled the gaps for international use with some compatibility with code page 437 by retaining the single and double box-drawing characters, while discarding the mixed ones (e.g. horizontal double/vertical single). All code page 437 characters have similar glyphs inUnicode and in Microsoft'sWGL4 character set, and therefore are available in most fonts inMicrosoft Windows, and also in the default VGA font of theLinux kernel, and theISO 10646 fonts forX11.
If you look at the first 32 characters in theIBM PC character set you'll see lots of whimsical characters — smiley face, musical notes, playing card suits and others. These were intended for character based games [...] Since we were using 8-bit characters we had 128 new spots to fill. We put serious characters there — three columns of foreign characters, based on ourDatamaster experience. Three columns of block graphic characters [...] many customers with Monochrome Display Adapter would have no graphics at all. [...] two columns had math symbols, greek letters (for math) and others [...] about the first 32 characters (x00-x1F)? [...] These characters originated with teletype transmission. But we could display them on the character based screens. So we added a set of "not serious" characters. They were intended as display only characters, not for transmission or storage. Their most probable use would be in character based games. [...] As in most things for the IBM PC, the one year development schedule left little time for contemplation and revision. [...] the character set was developed in a three person 4-hour meeting, and I was one of those on that plane from Seattle to Atlanta. There was some minor revision after that meeting, but there were many other things to design/fix/decide so that was about it. [...] the other participants in that plane trip were Andy Saenz — responsible for the video card, and Lew Eggebrecht — the chief engineer for the PC.