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Code Page 437 Characters158 symbols
The IBM PC's original character set — the graphics that text-mode games and ANSI art are built from. Open any character for its name and the fonts that have it.
Control pictures & suit glyphsHigh-half graphics
Control pictures & suit glyphs #control-pictures-suit-glyphs
High-half graphics #high-half-graphics
About code page 437 characters
Code page 437 is the character set burned into the original IBM PC in 1981, and for a decade it was simply what a computer screen looked like. Its low range held the control pictures — smileys, hearts, the four card suits, musical notes, arrows — drawn on screen whenever programs printed the control codes as glyphs, and games used them as sprites because they were free.
The high half is the drafting kit: line-drawing pieces in single and double weights, solid and shaded blocks, and the Greek letters and math signs a technical manual needed. Together they are the complete visual vocabulary of ANSI art and the text-mode era. The byte value of every character here is on the Code Page 437 grid page, its sibling reference.