If you don’t know Cistercian numbers, don’t worry. If you are not a monk of the Order of Sisters, there is really no reason for you to learn the cipher that was extended in the 13th century. But then again, there’s no reason not to use the number system to create this medieval cool computer number pad.
If you’re not familiar with the Cistercian number system, it’s actually quite clever. It has several forms, but the vertical form is used here [Tauno Erik] Based on a vertical steve with nine glyphs that can be attached to or attached to it. Each glyph represents one of the nine numbers – from one to nine; There is no need for a zero glyph. Steve has four quadrilaterals around it – the top right, the top left, the bottom right and the bottom left – and where the glyph is located determines the multiplier of the glyph. So, if you want to enter the number “1234”, you will overlay a single symbol as shown in the following glyphs.
[Tauno]Its Cistercian keypad, more recognizably a part of art and history than a useful peripheral, somehow shows that it was probably on its desk. [Theodoric of York, Medieval Accountant]. Its case is a laser-cut birch plywood, with a custom PCB for 20 keyboard switches and a Xiao RP2040 MCU that runs the show. The keycaps are made from what looks like oak with a 3D-printed portion of its previous wooden keycap macro pad. Each of the nine Cistercian glyphs is hand-carved on keycaps, as well as a fictional glyph for Zero, which was not part of the system, as well as operators and symbols that stunned medieval monks.
The Native Cistercian system is limited to numbers between 1 and 9,999, so we would assume that the keypad only extracts Arabic numerals related to pressing the Cistercian key and does not actually compose the complete Cistercian number. But the code will be pretty easy to do, and the results are pretty great, if a bit confusing for users. Even if it’s just for show, it’s still a great project, and we take off the hood of our monk costume. [Tauno] For this one.