Alt Codes
A legacy of code page 437 is the number combinations used in Windows Alt keycodes (where the user holds down the Alt key and enters a three-digit decimal code on the numpad) introduced in the first versions of MSDOS. The intention was that these numbers would change as the current character set was changed. But when Microsoft switched to more standard character sets (such as CP1252 and later Unicode) in Windows, so many users had memorized the numbers used by CP 437 that they were forced to replicate them (they added the ability to type a code in the actual character set by typing the zero on the keypad before the digits).
Read more about this topic: Code Page 437
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