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Calculator spelling

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Calculator spelling is a technique of spelling words using a calculator equipped with seven-segment displays of different technologies, including but not limited to LCD, VFD, LED, Panaplex, etc. Spelling with Nixie tubes won't produce good readability of the upside-down characters, while spelling with dot-matrix displays, as well as with fourteen-segment and sixteen-segment displays is so obvious that it cannot be considered a technical curiosity.

The primary use of calculator spelling is having fun, while it can also be used in calculator programming, etc.

Description

Calculator spelling came into widespread use within schoolchild and student societies when cheap portable calculators became available.

Humans are well known for their habits of finding ways of using things for purposes they were not originally designed for. That's why so many people try, for example, to run Linux on Xboxes, etc. Calculator spelling probably has similar origins.

Seven-segment displays are well known for their ability of displaying of some (but not all) Latin letters. Displaying letters of other alphabets, e.g. Cyrillic, is also possible. But the character set of a typical calculator is even more limited, not by the display, but by firmware and/or hardware.

Using four-function calculators for spelling

The character set of a generic four-function calculator, when it is turned upside down, is limited to the following Latin letters:

O I Z E h S g L B b or G (used rarely)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

To use an "O" at the end of a word, a decimal point must be used before it. Note than the 9 glyph may or may not have a bottom line (on old machines).

Here are some examples of words that can be displayed on such machines:

  • BEBE = 3838 ("baby" in Spanish and French)
  • BELOS SEIOS = 50135.50738 ("Beautiful breasts" in Portuguese)
  • BLOg = 6078
  • BOLILLO = 0.771708 ("Piece of bread" in Spanish)
  • BOOB = 8008, BOOBIES = 5318008, BOOBLESS = 55378008
  • ESEL = 7353 ("donkey" in German)
  • LOSE= 3507. LOOSE= 35007
  • gOOgLE = 376006
  • GOLE SISE = 3515.3706 ("Naked tits" in Croatian)
  • hEI = 134 ("hi" in Norwegian and Finnish)
  • hELLO = 0.7734
  • LEgS = 5637
  • OhIO = 0.140
  • OSEL = 7350, OSLE = 3750 ("donkey" in Czech, the second one is the vocative case "you, donkey!")
  • ShELLOIL = 710.77345

Using a fairly simple regular expression, it is possible to generate a thorough list of spellable words (see External links, below).

Using scientific calculators for spelling

Some scientific calculators equipped with seven-segment displays have the ability of displaying hexadecimal numbers, so they have letters A to F in their character sets. In addition, numbers 0, 1, 5 can be read as letters O, I, S on them. Having enough imagination, one can also read the number 7 as T (as in Leet, see below). This makes it possible to spell some words on such calculators without turning them upside down. Examples are: ACCESS, CAFE, CASIO, dEAdbEEF, FACE, FAST (with number 7 as letter T), SAFE. Due to the seven-segment limitations, the letters d and b are displayed in lowercase, and if one wants to display a capital B, the number 8 should be used instead. Of course, these machines are still suitable for the classic upside-down technique.

Some Soviet programmable calculators are capable of displaying a very limited set of Latin and Cyrillic letters, as well as space and minus sign. This capability is sometimes used in programs for these calculators.

See also

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