GOST 10859
# 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 |
