Code page 437 is the character set of the original IBM PC (personal computer), or MS-DOS. It is also known as CP 437, OEM 437, PC-8, MS-DOS Latin US or sometimes it is misleadingly referred to as the OEM font, High ASCII or Extended ASCII.
In a strict sense, this character set was not conceived as a code page—it was simply the graphical glyph repertoire available in the 9 by 14 pixels-per-character font of the IBM Monochrome Display Adapter (MDA) and the 8 by 8 pixels-per-character font of the Color Graphics Adapter (CGA) cards used with the original IBM PC. The ROM of the IBM Enhanced Graphics Adapter (EGA) contains an additional 8 by 14 pixels-per-character version and the VGA adapter expanded the character cell to 9 by 16 for compatibility with the finer VGA resolution. In the 21st century, this character set remains the primary font in the core of any EGA and VGA-compatible graphics card—that is, the text you can see on screen when a PC reboots, before any other font can be loaded from a storage medium, is rendered with this "Code Page". "437" is the default hardware Code Page for PC hardware sold in the United States (US) and Western Europe; systems that are available for purchase in Eastern European, Arabic, and Asian countries may differ.
Read more about Code Page 437: Display Adapters, The Code Page, Alt Codes, Characters, Difference From ASCII, Internationalization
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