Years and years ago, some bright ICT pioneer came to the conclusion that octal numbers were ideal for computer engineering. He was right, in the days of the 12 bit ALU, but soon, the buswidths became multiples of 4 and 8 bits. And then grouping 3 bits together is not that obvious anymore.
So an even brighter (wo)man came to the conclusion that grouping 4 bits was even better and it took up less digits. The problem, of course, was that the old Egyptians forgot to make 6 spare digits for this event. So, the Bright Mind satisfied himself with the first 6 capital letters (A-F).

Bright it may have been, the problem is that now hexadecimal (another word for 4 bit groups, since 4 bits can make up 16 digits) math became a lot more difficult since we didn't have proper names for the new postnine digits.
Another reason to abandon the [A..F] semi-digit series is the problems met by programmers who need to display these tokens on a 7 segment display. For the non-engineers: 7 segment displays are the digits of most digital alarm clocks. You can make an 'A', but the 'B' looks like an '8' unless you go for the 'b', which looks like a '6'.

This all is now to come to an end.

The EUCET (European Union Computer Engineering Team) have decided this official, Europe wide, nomenclature for the PostNine digits. The proposal is valid in the European Union as of January 1, 2004 and all government agencies either have converted their documents accordingly, or are in the process of doing so.
The same goes for the ICT engineers and programmers of government organisations. Commercial companies are supposed to follow as of Februari 28, 2005.

EUCET have organized a summit with BS and ANSI to come to a worldwide standard for the postnine digits. Rumour has it, that President George W Bush has used his influence to convince the ANSI to meet the EUCET proposal. And that's of course just how we got to know Mr President: a man of deeds.

Below you will find a table with all the names and figures of the hexadecimal digits. Most of these are pre-EUCET and The Committee have expressed they have no desire to change these. That would harm the introduction of the postnine digits.

Digit	English	German	French	Dutch	Old name
	Zero	Nul	Zero	Nul	0
	One	Eins	Un	Een	1
	Two	Zwei	Deux	Twee	2
	Three	Drei	Trois	Drie	3
	Four	Vier	Quattre	Vier	4
	Five	Fuenf	Cinq	Vijf	5
	Six	Sechs	Six	Zes	6
	Seven	Sieben	Sept	Zeven	7
	Eight	Acht	Huit	Acht	8
	Nine	Neun	Neuf	Negen	9
	Ack	Ack	Aque	Ack	A
	Bar	Bahr	Bar	Baar	B
	Cox	Coks	Coques	Cox	C
	Duh	Doeh	Duh	Duh	D
	Eck	Ekk	Eque	Eck	E
	Foo	Fuh	Fous	Foe	F

EUCET has done everything in its powers to make the pronounciation as universal as possible. The sounds can be made and written in any EU member state's language. This enables EUCET to start with standardising the ICT world, be it a small step for mankind.

One other great advantage of the EUCET P9 digits is that they all can be produced easily on ANY seven segment display, which is not the case with the current 'A..F' letters. No matter if you use an LCD, LED or custom VFD display, the EUCET P9 digits are easy to make and draw only little current. This make the new EUCET P9 digits a good choice for battery powered equipment.

In order to help the users in getting aquainted with EUCET P9 numbers more easily, the team produced ready made tables for multiplication and addition of P9 hex digits.

Press here for the multiplication table

Press here for the addition table

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