So many partially loaded images.

But definitely worth the wait. A great read. I liked the almost mimetic quality of "which slightly broken font plate is being reused to make the broken "3" I keep seeing" which is a classic detective novel trope, e.g. Lord Peter Whimsey in "strong poison" and a typewriter glitch he recognises.

That typeface is so familiar. One imagines a great big red "reset" up in the clouds, benevolent creator pondering pressing, this is definitely the font on the button. I can smell machine oil, hear 50hz hum just looking at these labels.

100Hz, actually…

I've tried it on the computer with "Gorton Digital" and that's just terrible, I can't recommend it. The spacing/kerning is all wrong.

Hoping someone takes on the project of making a nice digital font, potentially a mono-spaced one too.

Well, that didn't last long; Aptos enters the chat.

"I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."

And they'll puzzle over the inscriptions, "G809 BGG", "R420 BRL", "RFS 131Y", "SJ12 EXW", "RE51 CUE" - this on some huge chunk of steel, easily three times as big as the rest, and so many others.

What could they mean?

Perfect car for a 20-year-old.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_Stone

Then we got to the metal plates in elevators and the other uses, and my brain immediately turned around and said "Of course you know this; you've seen this a hundred thousand times.. you absolutely know it even if you don't consciously think about it."

A font forked at least a dozen times over the decades, with forks upon forks upon forks, full of nostalgia for times past.

"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"

Nothing beside remains.

At the same time, Gmail is using 244MB.

My average tab opened is about 30MB, so the difference is only 3 times the memory.

Probably only the network connection struggles for a few seconds in my phone, and that's it.

(the site seems to eagerly load lots of large images, and a 500MB video)

Normally I hate the pointless use of javascript in basic text and image websites, but lazy image loading would probably stop this server having been hugged to death

In some ways it's THE perfect hacker news article. It's about design sensibilities and typography, and as we know all HN readers have great taste, so it tickles that part of the brain.

It's mechanical and analogue, so it harkens back to a time when engineers built things with their hands and their work had a physical manifestation in the real world. So for the former 'physical' engineers who turned to tech for better career prospect (like me) it tickles that part of the brain too!

It has an air of Americana in that New York is its most iconic city and this article is drenched in 'look how good we used to make things', and then it delightfully leads us back to old blighty for the Anglophiles.

For an article romantic about a font, it's perfection. Catnip for nerds.

... and I find it distracting by how wrong it is. It should say "Single stroke Gothic", or even better: mention Gorton directly.

Instead, it says: "a Gothic sans-serif script", even if it mentions Leroy a few paragraphs later :)

As nerdy as it is, it is also an interesting historical look on how certain things in society/culture have a life that is hidden in plain view and quietly goes on. It is an interesting reflection on many things in life.

Sure enough. I learned a lot of history from this wonderful piece. And I still have the Leroy device I used in the 70s.