Sixteen segment display

A sixteen segment display is an optoelectronic type of display based on 16 segments that can be turned on or off according to the graphic pattern to be produced. It is an extension of the more common seven segment display (adding 4 diagonal, 2 vertical, and 3 horizontal segments).

Before the advent of inexpensive dot-matrix displays, sixteen and fourteen segment displays were some of the few options available for producing alphanumeric characters on calculators and other embedded systems. Sixteen segment displays may be based on one of several technologies, the two most common being LED and LCD. The LED variant is typically manufactured in single or dual character packages, to be combined as needed into text line displays of a suitable length for the application in question.

See also: Nixie tube