About the ETL Character Database

“ETL Character Database” is a collection of images of about 1.2 million hand-written and machine-printed numerals, symbols, Latin alphabets and Japanese characters and compiled in 9 datasets (ETL-1 to ETL-9). This database has been collected by Electrotechnical Laboratory (currently reorganized as the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST)) under the cooperation with Japan Electronic Industry Developement Association (currently reorganized as Japan Electronics and Information Technology Industries Association), universities and other research organizations for character recognition researches from 1973 to 1984. The database can be used for free only for research purposes. This database had been supplied by sending recorded media like magnetic tapes and CD-R with the postal mail. Since April 2011, this database has been available for download. The database has been moved to etlcdb.db.aist.go.jp since January 2014.

Specification: ETL-1, ETL-2, ETL-3, ETL-4, ETL-5, ETL-6, ETL-7, ETL-8, ETL-9

File Formats and Sample Script