[geeks] Typography Question

[Olaf Mersmann]

Ho Jonathan,

Jonathan C. Patschke wrote:
> Technical manuals of the 1950s and 1960s have a very stately appearance
> to them.  Obviously I'm not the only person who's noticed this, as Knuth
> created TeX to preserve that look for his books.
> 
> However, there's one thing missing from the TeX distributions, the 1950s
> fonts!
> 
> There was a post on rescue@ about the IBM 704, which led me to Google
> for more information on it because old IBM computers interest me.  I ran
> across this (warning: IBM pr0n):
> 
>   http://www.cs.virginia.edu/brochure/images/manuals/IBM_704/IBM_704.html
> 
> The sans-serif lettering at the top of the pages (and in the subtitle of
> the cover) is -gorgeous-.  The small, narrow-pitched typeface used in
> the copyright notice -looks- like it's supposed to accompany a $xxx,xxx
> computer.  The italics are really nice, too.
> 
> I dunno.  Computer Modern is an okay typeface, but next to stuff like
> this, it's a cheap parlour trick.
> 
> Does any one know of a source for lookalikes of these older typefaces?

I'm no typography expert and matching up the scans with samples one can 
find on the web is no easy task, but myfonts 
(http://www.myfonts.com/browse/foundry/ibm/) has a pretty complete list 
of all the fonts IBM produced. A quick scan didn't find anything like 
the indeed truly gorgeous sans-serif font in the manual.

HTH
-- Olaf