Calculator spelling is an unintended characteristic of the seven-segments display traditionally used by

calculator An electronic calculator is typically a portable electronic device used to perform calculations, ranging from basic arithmetic to complex mathematics. The first solid-state electronic calculator was created in the early 1960s. Pocket-sized ...

s, in which, when read upside-down, the digits resemble letters of the

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the o ...

. Each digit may be mapped to one or more letters, creating a limited but functional

subset In mathematics, Set (mathematics), set ''A'' is a subset of a set ''B'' if all Element (mathematics), elements of ''A'' are also elements of ''B''; ''B'' is then a superset of ''A''. It is possible for ''A'' and ''B'' to be equal; if they are ...

of the alphabet, sometimes referred to as ''beghilos'' (or ''beghilosz'').

Applications

Aside from novelty and amusement, calculator spelling has limited utility. The popularity of pagers in the 1990s gave rise to a form of

leetspeak Leet (or "1337"), also known as eleet or leetspeak, is a system of modified spellings used primarily on the Internet. It often uses character replacements in ways that play on the similarity of their glyphs via reflection or other resemblance. ...

called pagerspeak.Pager Language , Teens Create Language of Pager-Speak - Los Angeles Times
/ref> Students, in particular, experimented with calculators to discover new words.

English

: The "original" attributed example of calculator spelling, which dates from the 1970s, is 5318008, which when turned over spells " BOOBIES". Another early example of calculator spelling offered the sequence 0.7734, which becomes " hello", or could also be written as “0.1134”. Other words possible with the traditional "BEghILOSZ" set include "LOOSE", "ShELL", "BEIgE", "gOBBLE", "gOOgLE", and many others. Among the longest are "hILLBILLIES" and "SLEIghBELLS" at 11, "gLOSSOLOgIES" and "BIBLIOLOgIES" at 12 letters, and " hEEBEEgEEBEES" at 13 letters. Another common case, 7734206, spells "gO 2 hELL". 8008 is special in that it can spell "BOOB" upside-down or right-side up. 71077345 spells " SHELLOIL". There are also a couple of names that are able to be calculator spelled. For example, 7718=BILL, 46137=LEIgh, 5107=LOIS, 31773=ELLIE, 317171l3=ELI LILIE (in polish: lily flowers of Elisabeth) and 302=ZOE.

Scientific and programmer calculators

Scientific calculators that feature

hexadecimal In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, hexa ...

readout using the letters ''A'' through ''F'' offer more flexibility. Using a scientific calculator with hex capability, the earlier "5318008" example can be improved with the A–F keys to spell "B00B1E5", without needing to rotate the display (a practice known as

hexspeak Hexspeak, like leetspeak, is a novelty form of variant English spelling using the hexadecimal digits. Created by programmers as memorable magic numbers, hexspeak words can serve as a clear and unique identifier with which to mark memory or data. H ...

Base 16 In mathematics and computing, the hexadecimal (also base-16 or simply hex) numeral system is a positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of 16. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using 10 symbols, he ...

). : Students often use this capability and the improved "alpha" feature that use the letters "A" through "Z" to write messages, separating words by using the minus sign ("-") or other punctuation. In some calculators that use dot matrix displays, a

factorial In mathematics, the factorial of a non-negative denoted is the product of all positive integers less than or equal The factorial also equals the product of n with the next smaller factorial: \begin n! &= n \times (n-1) \times (n-2) \t ...

product sign ("!") can be used to add emphasis. For example, "B00B1E5!".

References

External links

Calculator Haikus
nbsp;– Some examples and a report of finding a total of 118

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

words possible to display using the upside-down technique
A list of 250 calculator-spellable English words
nbsp;– A list of calculator spelling words generated by regular expression search
Topsy-Turvy Calculator
nbsp;– An upside-down calculator

– A list of calculator-spellable Spanish words, and

Logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wordma ...

code to convert them to numbers
The Ultimate List
nbsp;– An 824 word list and an extended 1455 word list of English words possible to display on an upside down calculator,

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

code to aid their creation plus three 'micro stories' using only the available words.
251 words you can spell with a calculator. – Present&Correct
251 words you can spell with a calculator. (10/27/13) {{DEFAULTSORT:Calculator Spelling Calculators Spelling

Applications

English

Scientific and programmer calculators

See also

References

Further reading

External links