GOST 10859

GOST 10859 (1964) is a standard of the Soviet Union which defined how to encode data on punched cards. This standard allowed a variable word size, depending on the type of data being encoded, but only uppercase characters.

These include the non-ASCII “decimal exponent symbol” ⏨. It was used to express real numbers in scientific notation. For example: 6.0221415⏨23.

The ⏨ character was also part of the ALGOL programming language specifications and was incorporated into the then German character encoding standard ALCOR. GOST 10859 also included numerous other non-ASCII characters/symbols useful to ALGOL programmers, e.g.: ∨, ∧, ⊃, ≡, ¬, ≠, ↑, ↓, ×, ÷, ≤, ≥, °, &, ∅, compare with ALGOL operators.

Character sets

GOST 10859 4-bit code: Binary-coded decimal

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
0x	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	+	-	/	,	.	DEL

GOST 10859 5-bit code: with BCD & mathematical operators

	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	A	B	C	D	E	F
0x	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	+	-	/	,	.	SP
1x	⏨	↑	(	)	×	=	;	[	]	*	‘	’	≠	<	>	DEL

GOST 10859 6-bit code: with only Cyrillic upper-case letters

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

0x

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

+

-

/

,

.

SP

1x

⏨

↑

(

)

×

=

;

[

]

*

‘

’

≠

<

>

:

2x

А

Б

В

Г

Д

Е

Ж

З

И

Й

К

Л

М

Н

О

П

3x

Р

С

Т

У

Ф

Х

Ц

Ч

Ш

Щ

Ы

Ь

Э

Ю

Я

DEL

GOST 10859 7-bit code: Cyrillic and Latin upper-case letters

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

0x

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

+

-

/

,

.

SP

1x

⏨

↑

(

)

×

=

;

[

]

*

‘

’

≠

<

>

:

2x

А

Б

В

Г

Д

Е

Ж

З

И

Й

К

Л

М

Н

О

П

3x

Р

С

Т

У

Ф

Х

Ц

Ч

Ш

Щ

Ы

Ь

Э

Ю

Я

D

4x

F

G

I

J

L

N

Q

R

S

U

V

W

Z

‾

≤

≥

5x

∨

∧

⊃

¬

÷

≡

%

◊

|

—

_

!

"

Ъ

°

'

6x

→

←

?

↓

∅

±

∇

7x

DEL

Cyrillic and Latin letters with identical (A, B, C, E, H, K, M, O, P, T, X) and similar (Y/У) glyphs were unified.

GOST 10859 6-bit code: with only Latin upper-case letters

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

0x

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

+

-

/

,

.

SP

1x

⏨

↑

(

)

×

=

;

[

]

*

‘

’

≠

<

>

:

2x

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

3x

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

∨

∧

⊃

¬

÷

DEL

See also

• KOI-7 (GOST 13052-67)
• KOI-8 (GOST 19768-74)

References

• (in Russian) ГОСТ 10859-64. Машины вычислительные. Коды алфавитно-цифровые для перфокарт и перфолент.
• GOST 10859 (from the Computer Museum of University of Amsterdam)
• GOST 10859

Further reading

• Savard, John J. G. (2018) [2005]. "Computer Arithmetic". quadibloc. The Early Days of Hexadecimal. Archived from the original on 2018-07-16. Retrieved 2018-07-16.