Retro Computer & Teletext Symbols

Teletext was invented in Britain in the early 1970s: pages of news, weather and sport sent hidden inside the television signal and decoded by the set. Its pictures were built from a cell split into six little blocks, two across and three down, so a page was a mosaic of 2 × 3 tiles. Every combination of the six cells on or off gives 64 characters; the BBC Micro borrowed the same set for its Mode 7, Prestel and Minitel used the idea for videotex, and almost every European TV sold from the 1980s could show them.

Unicode calls these sextants: 🬀 is cell 1 (top left), 🬁 cell 2 (top right), 🬂 cells 1 and 2 together, and 🬻 is every cell except the first. The cells are numbered left to right, top to bottom, which is exactly how the grid above is arranged: each row is one pattern of the top four cells, each column adds nothing, the bottom-left cell, the bottom-right cell or both. Four of the 64 combinations are missing because they already existed as plain blocks: ▌ (left column), ▐ (right column), █ (all six) and empty space.

Teletext also had a separated graphics mode in which every cell was drawn with a thin gap around it, giving a page a dotted, lighter texture. Those 63 shapes, 𜹑 to 𜺏, were added as their own characters in Unicode 16.0 (2024) so that teletext emulators and page archives could round-trip without private-use codes. They sit under the contiguous set in the same grid order.

Symbols for Legacy Computing: which machines these came from

The block Symbols for Legacy Computing (U+1FB00 onwards) arrived in Unicode 13.0 in March 2020 with 212 characters, proposed by a group of retro-computing enthusiasts who went through the character ROMs of the Amstrad CPC, Apple II MouseText, Atari 8-bit and ST, Commodore PET and 64 (PETSCII), MSX, Mattel Aquarius, Oric, RISC OS, Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, TRS-80, TI-99/4A, Minitel and teletext, and encoded every shape that was not yet in Unicode. That is where the sextants, the smooth wedges 🬼 🭏 🭦, the seven-segment digits 🯰–🯹, the half diagonals 🯐 🯓 and oddities like the inverse check mark 🮱 and the negative question mark 🯄 come from.

Some characters only make sense in pairs. The running man 🮲🮳 is two halves of one Apple IIc MouseText icon; the folder 🮹🮺 is the same trick; the pointing hand 🯁🯂🯃 is three thirds of a TRS-80 Model III cursor. They were encoded that way, as the top half and bottom half of the integral sign were decades earlier, so that old screens could be reproduced character for character.

A second block, Symbols for Legacy Computing Supplement (U+1CC00 onwards), followed in Unicode 16.0 in September 2024 with 686 more characters from machines the first round had missed: the Kaypro CP/M luggables (the octants), the Sharp MZ series (sprites, outlined letters and the four-tile chess pieces), the Mattel Aquarius (the standing person 𜷦𜷧), Ohio Scientific and Robotron KC micros, and the HP 2640 terminal, whose large type ROM supplied the 55 pieces 𜸚 𜸩 𜹄 for building headline-sized letters out of ordinary cells.

Octants, sextants and pixel art in plain text

An octant splits the cell into eight: two columns, four rows. With 256 patterns you can plot any 2 × 4 bitmap one character at a time, which is why terminal plotting tools and Unicode art generators jumped on them. 26 of the 256 were already in Unicode as half blocks, quarter blocks and quadrants (▀ ▄ ▌ ▐ ▘ ▟ and friends), so the Supplement encodes the other 230; the grid above adds the four single eighth-cells 𜺨 𜺫 𜺣 𜺠 in their places and leaves a gap for each old block. Each row is labelled with the sextant that has the same top six cells, so you can read it as "this sextant, plus the bottom row".

Octants are the solid cousins of braille art: a braille cell is also 2 × 4 dots, but dots, not filled squares, so a picture in braille looks dotted while the same picture in octants looks like real pixels. If you want a smoother curve than square cells give, the wedges 🬼🬽🬾🬿🭀 and 🭒🭓🭔🭕🭖 slope one edge of the cell, and the triangles 🭬🭭🭮🭯 point in the four directions. For dotted and shaded textures, and for the eighth-block lines that PETSCII used for borders, go to Block & Shade Characters; the straight lines and corners are in Box Drawing Characters.

Everything here assumes a monospace font and that adjacent lines sit flush. In a word processor with line spacing above 1.0 the mosaic shows horizontal gaps; in a terminal or a code block it joins up. Sextants are the safest choice today: the Windows Terminal font Cascadia Code draws every sextant and all 256 octants since its April 2024 release, and terminals such as foot and st render the sextant and eighth-block ranges themselves without relying on the font.

Sprites, chess pieces and seven-segment digits

The Sharp MZ computers shipped a character set full of ready-made game graphics, and the Supplement keeps them: flying saucers 𜱊 𜱋, alien monsters in two walking frames 𜱔 𜱕, crabs 𜱐 𜱑, a spider 𜱒 𜱓, rockets pointing four ways 𜱖𜱗𜱘𜱙, a moon lander 𜷵, a three-frame explosion 𜷽𜷾𜷿, racing cars 𜲗𜲘𜲙𜲚, tanks 𜲞 𜲟, snake heads with open and closed mouths 𜱰 𜱴, fish 𜲒 𜲓 and frogs 𜷻 𜷼. Numbered frames are animation steps: print 𜱔 and 𜱕 alternately at the same spot and the alien walks.

Bigger pictures take four cells. The chess pieces 𜲺𜲻𜲼𜲽, the television 𜲲𜲳𜲴𜲵 and the microcomputer 𜲶𜲷𜲸𜲹 are each an upper pair and a lower pair, meant to be typed on two lines; the four-tile faces let you mix eyes 𜲦𜲧 or 𜲨𜲩 with a smile 𜲪𜲫, a frown 𜲰𜲱 or an open mouth 𜲮𜲯. The sixteen twelfth-circle pieces 𜰰 to 𜰿 build one large circle across a 4 × 4 square of cells, and the outlined capitals 𜳖 𜳗 𜳘 and digits 𜳰 𜳱 were the Sharp MZ's title-screen lettering.

The seven-segment digits 🯰🯱🯲🯳🯴🯵🯶🯷🯸🯹 look like a pocket calculator or a digital clock, and unlike most of this page they are formally decimal digits: Unicode gives them numeric values, so software that understands Unicode digits reads 🯲🯰🯲🯵 as the number 2025. The outlined digits 𜳲𜳰𜳲𜳵 are digits too, while the outlined letters are classed as symbols, not letters, so they will not match a word search or change case.

How to type legacy computing symbols and why they show as boxes

No keyboard has these, so the practical way is to copy them: tap any symbol in the grid above, or copy a whole ready-made row from the combos. Programmers can type the code point directly, "\U0001FB02" in Python or "\u{1FB02}" in JavaScript for 🬂; on Linux, Ctrl+Shift+U followed by the hex code works in most text fields. The 2020 block runs from U+1FB00 to U+1FBF9, the 2024 Supplement from U+1CC00 to U+1CEB3.

Font support is the honest caveat. The sextants and octants are now in Cascadia Code and in several free monospace fonts made for terminals; the wedges, segmented digits and MouseText icons of the 2020 block are in fewer; the sprites, chess pieces and large type pieces of the 2024 Supplement are drawn by very few fonts yet, so on a phone or in a chat app they often appear as empty boxes or question marks. If a shape matters, send it where a monospace font with these blocks is installed, or send a screenshot.

Because the pictures are symbols, not emoji, they stay one colour and never turn into the cartoon version: 𜱊 is not 🛸 and 𜱰 is not 🐍. Keep the outlined letters and segmented digits for decoration rather than real text, and remember that several of these characters are halves and thirds that only make sense next to their partner.