What is the origin of the OCR characters U+244[3,4,5]?

Sławomir Osipiuk sosipiuk at gmail.com
Fri Jun 6 18:21:51 CDT 2025


The Optical Character Recognition Block includes these characters:
U+2440 ⑀ OCR HOOK
U+2441 ⑁ OCR CHAIR
U+2442 ⑂ OCR FORK
U+2443 ⑃ OCR INVERTED FORK
U+2444 ⑄ OCR BELT BUCKLE
U+2445 ⑅ OCR BOW TIE

Wikipedia claims (wrongly, I believe) that these all originate in the
OCR-A font specified by ISO 1073. However, ISO 1073-1:1976 and ISO
2033:1983 only contain the first three of these, as does ANSI
X3.17-1981 and the much older ECMA-19.

The latter three characters – inverted fork, belt buckle, and bow tie
– do not appear in any of those standards and don’t seem to be an
official part of OCR-A according to any reliable document I can find.

Where do they come from?

Cheers,
Sławomir Osipiuk



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