In my 1971 MERMAC manual (about an IBM 360 software, I mentioned this before) there are some listings.
Some are upright, others are 90 degr rotated. Latter ones having a rare looking 4.
I did some research and I think this is just a typewriter. Or maybe a specific Teleprinter/Teletype model?
The number 4 is maybe the most interesting number with most variants. Here are 3 modern fonts. Iceland has another nice looking 4. The TeleSys Font is similar like mine. Below “Classic Typrewriter” is most similar but the 3 is different.
Which printer or (vector) display /Terminal has this or similar (as standard font) or other strange numbers?
Are there any good comparison sites of (vintage) fonts espcially with numbers.
Is this on unicode? Below 2 images of my book. There are also larger math symbols. I assume these were edited/prolonged by hand.
I do recall (as a child learning to read) noticing that 4 was found in two forms, the closed triangle and the open one.
That final image seems to have the upper and lower case sigma in a lighter weight - but perfectly aligned and spaced. It also has hand-drawn bars for the big root sign (making use of a small root sign) and for the big brackets.
I remember when starting to write I started to write the digit four with an open top. I still do. Maybe influenced by some science stuff on TV or news about “the space race”, etc. Not sure why but searching now I find very few uses of that style other than in 7-segment displays and have not seen a font with that style implemented as digit 4, so I found the ones above quite interesting.
I did find one vague reference to not using the closed top style as it can be confused with the digit 9 though - also at school (late 60s) we were not taught to do joined up writing but to print - which was OK for me as a left-handed dyslectic young boy, but it annoyed my grandparents, and even today I still get people expecting me to be able to read and write “joined up writing”… (which I struggle with).
I also found a proposal to add one into unicode:
but can’t find it actually implemented.
Closest might be the Lao digit four: ໔ or this: └┤ (Which I think it really a rotated h)
Interesting find, that Unicode application. I think it’s quite wrong to suggest that open 4 comes from 7 segment displays. For example, the 19th century Didot looks like this:
Notably, the openness of the 4 could be on either left or right of the summit, as it were. And the cross can be extended or cut short. So there are variations - as seen in the unicode application:
Here in Austria (and maybe in other places in continental Europe), the open 4 was the canonical form, when I learned writing. Personally, I’ve come to think of it much like of the “schoolbook a” (the Futura-like “a” with a vertical stroke found in schoolbok fonts). Mind that 1,4,7, and also 9 are very much subject to national/regional convention.
(Is there an up-stroke at the top of 1? Does it have a serif-stroke at the bottom? Is 4 open or closed, does the horizontal stroke extend beyond the vertical stroke? Does 7 have a crossing bar? Does it have a wavy top? This also applies to the bottom horizontal stroke of 2! Not to speak of the numerous ways and conventions to draw 9!)*
') As I originally learned it: yes; I think so; yes open, but (slightly) slanted; yes; yes; yes; yes, 2 as well; beginning at the lower left in a curve up and then forming an eye, in a single stroke.
For the original question, no idea how to search for an old or obscure font. I wonder if Marcin Wichary could help. Or the denizens of /r/typography. Or, as ever, the VCFed forums, or ClassicCmp mail list.
Popular in France to have a horizontal crossbar, about halfway up the 7. Allegedly to avoid confusing handwritten 7s with 1s.
I still cross my zeros when handwriting computer code, to avoid confusing them with the letter O, and it’s common to see computer fonts with a crossed zero (or a dot in the middle of the zero).
Lots of early typewriters didn’t have a number 1 - the typists were taught to use a lower case L, and some typewriters had no zero either (typists taught to use an upper case letter O ).
Not a terminal, but WW2-era US military “mill” morse transcription typewriters typically had non-lining numerals, a slashed zero, uppercase only and very large (9 cpi) type. Some of them had open 4s, like the Royal mentioned here: WW2 Navy mill typewriter - U.S. Militaria Forum:
Excellent match! I do rather like the way older digits had descenders and ascenders. Every variation helps with legibility - more signal, less confusion.
Yes, thanks very much. I found this and other sites of golfball fonts.
There are different balls with that 4. Also most other numbers match like the 3 unlike the WW2 ones. But my 7 is different. Longer top stroke no hooks.
And maybe they used 2 different ones, also for the other text and symbols and boxes.
My dad even had one in the 70s but I don’t recall the font. Not sure what happened to it. Maybe I crashed it as kid as I often try to write as fast as possible.
Another strange fact is, that the pages are watermarked.
That seven numeral does look unusual, especially the way it kerns into the character space of the previous character. The characters look too smooth to have been made by a pen plotter or film recorder. I wonder if it was made on something like a VariTyper?
(CW on VariTyper / Vari-Typer machines: if you experience pareidolia as strongly as I do, those machines 100% have faces and not particularly friendly ones …)
… And maybe they used 2 different ones, also for the other text and symbols and boxes.
The slightly lighter symbols compared to the body text might be down to the regular type-ball having greater wear than the seldom-used symbol one.
You mentioned Unicode earlier. The consortium is not very good at recording differences in numerals. They kicked out proposals for old-style/non-lining numerals saying that they weren’t separate characters, yet they quite happily include numerals in multiple styles inside circles. Since most of the consortium’s money seems to come from Apple and Google now, they seem to be focusing on the core business of adding new emoji every year. I won’t wait for them to add a Scots Pie or Chip Roll emoji in my lifetime.
Also, the zero looks just a bit more square than the capital O, which should be rather rare
In general, numbers are rather wide and seem to occupy the entire width of the letter box (em), which seems to be a distinguishing trait of that font.
(Usually, numbers are less in width than capital letters.)
The primary goal of Unicode is data interchange, not font details. In other words, data file taken from system A can be converted to system B and back, preferably without any data information loss.
How sometimes some characters make it in while seemingly conflicting this goal, is simply that if an existing computer system C had “digit four, with Jolly Father Christmases Caroling”, that goes in, because data-wise that is “digit four”.
That being said, I would not mind seeing more on the different digit forms.
It can’t be a regular, manual typewriter, as the results/stats are printed out according the value (unless it’s a demonstration).
So it must be some sort of printer.
And they probably chosen this font for the best graphical result (full line). Next to the # they mainly used a * for similar graphs. Maybe it can be chosen or they changed it.
