Code page 437 (CCSID 437) is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer).

[note 1] Many file formats developed at the time of the IBM PC are based on code page 437 as well.

These sets were designed to match 437 as much as possible, for instance sharing the code points for many of the line-drawing characters, while still allowing text in a local language to be displayed.

For instance, many methods of outputting text on the original IBM PC would interpret hex codes 07, 08, 0A, and 0D as BEL, BS, LF, and CR, respectively.

The repertoire of code page 437 was taken from the character set of Wang word-processing machines, according to Bill Gates in an interview with Gates and Paul Allen that appeared in the 2 October 1995 edition of Fortune Magazine: According to an interview with David J. Bradley (developer of the PC's ROM-BIOS) the characters were decided upon during a four-hour meeting on a plane trip from Seattle to Atlanta by Andy Saenz (responsible for the video card), Lew Eggebrecht (chief engineer for the PC) and himself.

To draw these characters directly from these code points, a Microsoft Windows font called MS Linedraw[24] replicates all of the code page 437 characters, thus providing one way to display DOS text on a modern Windows machine as it was shown in DOS, with limitations.

The presence of the last is unusual, since the Spanish peseta was never an internationally relevant currency, and also never had a symbol of its own; it was simply abbreviated as "Pt", "Pta", "Pts", or "Ptas".