Nine-segment display - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

A nine-segment display is a type of display based on 9 segments that can be turned on or off according to the graphic pattern to be produced. It is an extension of the more common seven-segment display

Seven-segment display

A seven-segment display , or seven-segment indicator, is a form of electronic display device for displaying decimal numerals that is an alternative to the more complex dot-matrix displays...

, having an additional two diagonal or vertical segments between the top, middle, and bottom horizontal segments. This provides a minimal method of displaying alphanumeric characters.

In some Russian digital calculators in the 1970s, such as the Elektronika

Elektronika

Electronika is the brand name used for many different electronic products such as calculators, electronic watches, portable games and radios in the Soviet Union and, nowadays, in Russia...

4-71b http://www.taswegian.com/MOSCOW/4-71b.html, 9-segment displays were used to provide basic alphanumerics to avoid confusions with representing numbers in Russian postcode. The extra two bars were slanted forward, allowing for an appropriate-looking И

I (Cyrillic)

I is a letter used in almost all ancient and modern Cyrillic alphabets.It commonly represents the close front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "machine", or the near-close near-front unrounded vowel , like the pronunciation of ⟨i⟩ in "bin".-History:The Cyrillic letter I was...

, and to differentiate the numeral 3 from the letter З

Ze (Cyrillic)

Ze is a letter of the Cyrillic alphabet.It commonly represents the voiced alveolar fricative , like the pronunciation of ⟨z⟩ in "zoo".Ze is romanized using the Latin letter ⟨z⟩....

. The Sharp

Sharp Corporation

is a Japanese multinational corporation that designs and manufactures electronic products. Headquartered in Abeno-ku, Osaka, Japan, Sharp employs more than 55,580 people worldwide as of June 2011. The company was founded in September 1912 and takes its name from one of its founder's first...

Compet calculator also uses a 9-segment display, allowing a small range of characters and symbols

Nine-segment displays are used in many Timex digital watches, and some pager

Pager

A pager is a simple personal telecommunications device for short messages. A one-way numeric pager can only receive a message consisting of a few digits, typically a phone number that the user is then requested to call...

s, such as the Nixxo XPage, http://www.primustel.ca/en/residential/paging/en_xpage.pdf, the Arch BR502 pager http://content.arch.com/products/datasheets/DataSheetbr502.pdf, and the Scope Geo N8T http://www.sensorium.co.uk/datasheets/paging/geo_n8t.pdf.
It is also some Epson Stylus printers, and Newport iSeries digital meters http://www.newportus.com/PDFspecs/i32.pdf. The display used in the iSeries is unique in that it has a vertical extra segment at top, and a fully backwards-leaning slant for the extra segment at bottom. This allows for a somewhat more natural-appearing R and M. The Burroughs Panaplex http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/nixies2.html is a commercially produced nine-segment alphanumeric display.

The letters displayed by a nine-segment display are not necessarily consistently uppercase or lowercase in shape. A common compromise is to use a lower-case "n" instead of "N". Depending on the design of the display segments, the use of the extra two segments may be avoided whenever possible, as in the Nixxo XPage's tall-lowercase "r" and "y". Perhaps to avoid this awkward inconsistency, the Scope Geo N8T does not allow the use of the letters J K Q W X Y or Z.

A nine-segment display has been developed for displaying Bangla and Roman numerals.

See also