https://www.flickr.com/photos/27088565@N07/2582809036/in/pho...
But most people paid designers instead of trying to DIY it, because place and paste was a difficult job.
I discovered type in the late 70s through these catalogs and I was instantly fascinated by the way the shapes of the letter designs somehow managed to imply mood, context, and meaning.
I still don't understand it, and I'm not sure anyone does. Professional designers understand it intuitively, but there's no definitive manual that describes how you get from a shape to an association.
Even with Eurostile - it's been used in science fiction for so long it wins by association. But it's only there because it works so well. Blocky, clean, functional, sans serif only gets you so far when you're trying to understand why.
It's hard to imagine doing the signage on a spaceship with Monotype Corsiva or Caslon. Of course you could... but not without generating severe cognitive dissonance.
On top of that, part of the draw of sci-fi is to imagine a new, different world. That includes different fonts.