A Font for the ASR-33 TeleType Character Set¶
The emulator for the ICL2903 Educational System’s interactive BASIC environment reproduces the look and feel of an ASR33 TeleType with a UK print head so that it can display text that looks like this:
NSP 2903 BASIC SYSTEM
15/11/77 TIME 17:06
NENE COLLEGE COMPUTER CENTRE
READY
10 PRINT 5*5
99 END
RUN
25
LINE 99 DONE
To do this, I created a TrueType font by taking macro photos of some old faded TeleType listings from the era. From a number of images like this:
glyphs for all 64 characters in the set were extracted and used to generate a font representing our school’s TeleType. Notice that:
- There are no lower case letters
- Being a UK print head and keyboard, the l sign was printable but the $ sign was not. However, I’ve added a $ sign because the ICL 2903 character set included both.
- The back-arrow character, _, is printed by the RUBOUT key to indicate that the previous character has been deleted.
Letters¶
A |
B |
C |
D |
E |
F |
G |
H |
I |
J |
K |
L |
M |
N |
O |
P |
Q |
R |
S |
T |
U |
V |
W |
X |
Y |
Z |
Digits¶
0 |
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Special Characters¶
: |
; |
< |
= |
> |
? |
! |
|
# |
l |
% |
& |
' |
( |
) |
* |
+ |
, |
- |
. |
/ |
@ |
[ |
$ |
] |
^ |
" |
_ |