Nice writeup!
Yeah, that font! :D
I didn't have a deadtest cart back in ancient times, but I built one when I built my first C64 (from PCB and up), and the first thing I did with that machine, was to boot it with the dead test cart.. Which didn't work because the PCB I got didn't wire the pins it needed.. I thought on it until I figured that hey! chip select pin!! And then I jumpered that pin and saw for the very first time, a brand new C64 come up and vomit garbage all over the screen because I had gotten a wrong chip! :D
In Germany (maybe also Austria?), that font is probably best known from the logo of major computer magazine/site CHIP (https://www.chip.de/). Although, for some unfathomable reason, the C in the "dead test font" doesn't have the characteristic "thickening" in the lower vertical part, although the G has it...
And so many variant typefaces of the same graphical language were seen in a million products during the home computer boom of the late 70s and early 80s. Iconic.
It's a copy of the Westminster font from the 60s which was an adaption of the visual style of MICR digits and symbols to a full symbology (without being machine readable). It was a meme for computerbilia of the era that now seems quaint.
The other thing that caught my eye is that M has the thickening on the opposite side to N. I thought it was for easier recognition of similar letters (same with A and R, O and Q), but U and V have the thickening on the same side. Maybe C vs G is the reason why C doesn't have the thickening.
I was recently exploring fonts of the next decade from old Mac system 6-9 era on my still in progress personal blog site https://hankdoes.ai/design-system/
Thank you author for the font and the lovely dive into computing and type history!
Good ol' It's A Computer (tm) font. A good while back I've been using Westminster in every piece of UI I wrote for myself. Maybe I should start doing that again.
Here is an interesting first hand account about the history of Westminster. Interestingly the creator himself does not seem to know why the (IMO rather unfitting) name Westminster was chosen:
> Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.
A single minimum error by design would obviously be perfection. And it appears to be a myth story anyways - in truth Islamic carpet weavers do aim for perfection.
I've always thought it would be a catch-22 gotcha rule. Dieties presumably choose to either (A) care about rules or (B) not care about rules. An ambiguous rule is dangerous - especially if intent was what mattered?
I am pretty sure that I saw that font on a C64 before. Paradroid used a very similar font for the logo, but the game itself uses a different font (Paradrew).
Nice writeup! Yeah, that font! :D I didn't have a deadtest cart back in ancient times, but I built one when I built my first C64 (from PCB and up), and the first thing I did with that machine, was to boot it with the dead test cart.. Which didn't work because the PCB I got didn't wire the pins it needed.. I thought on it until I figured that hey! chip select pin!! And then I jumpered that pin and saw for the very first time, a brand new C64 come up and vomit garbage all over the screen because I had gotten a wrong chip! :D
https://dusted.dk/pages/c64/MaxFake64/
In Germany (maybe also Austria?), that font is probably best known from the logo of major computer magazine/site CHIP (https://www.chip.de/). Although, for some unfathomable reason, the C in the "dead test font" doesn't have the characteristic "thickening" in the lower vertical part, although the G has it...
This is basically the MICR font: Magnetic Ink (!) Character Recognition. Amazing idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic_ink_character_recogni...
And so many variant typefaces of the same graphical language were seen in a million products during the home computer boom of the late 70s and early 80s. Iconic.
It's a copy of the Westminster font from the 60s which was an adaption of the visual style of MICR digits and symbols to a full symbology (without being machine readable). It was a meme for computerbilia of the era that now seems quaint.
The other thing that caught my eye is that M has the thickening on the opposite side to N. I thought it was for easier recognition of similar letters (same with A and R, O and Q), but U and V have the thickening on the same side. Maybe C vs G is the reason why C doesn't have the thickening.
I was recently exploring fonts of the next decade from old Mac system 6-9 era on my still in progress personal blog site https://hankdoes.ai/design-system/
Thank you author for the font and the lovely dive into computing and type history!
Good ol' It's A Computer (tm) font. A good while back I've been using Westminster in every piece of UI I wrote for myself. Maybe I should start doing that again.
Here is an interesting first hand account about the history of Westminster. Interestingly the creator himself does not seem to know why the (IMO rather unfitting) name Westminster was chosen:
https://www.mercerdesign.com/true-story-westminster-font/
Reminds me of the font in Master of Orion: https://www.mobygames.com/game/212/master-of-orion/screensho...
I love the "MICR line"-like appearance, fonts of which type were heavily used in the 1970s and 1980s to indicate "computer/technology stuff".
Seeing typos like 'resulation' is now a nice hint that a human wrote the article.
Nice exploration, bit of quirky fun.
> Even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections, proof they were crafted by the honest, simple, hard-working indigenous peoples of wherever.
Every hand-knotted carpet has some error per design, since only Allah is perfect.
But, I guess, "resulation" may be a bit blotchy for a sign of humbleness. :-)
> some error per design
A single minimum error by design would obviously be perfection. And it appears to be a myth story anyways - in truth Islamic carpet weavers do aim for perfection.
I've always thought it would be a catch-22 gotcha rule. Dieties presumably choose to either (A) care about rules or (B) not care about rules. An ambiguous rule is dangerous - especially if intent was what mattered?
The Japanese wabi-sabi is the core behind an equivalent folklore story I heard: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabi-sabi
Sorry, I had to fix this.
(You're welcome anyway. And yes, I think, it's the sort of quirky article, an LLM can't come up with.)
As a perfectionist, I twitched ;-)
Don't say that, or else Ai will start inserting typos.
Oh, I'm sure there are people that already do it intentionally.
I am pretty sure that I saw that font on a C64 before. Paradroid used a very similar font for the logo, but the game itself uses a different font (Paradrew).
There are a hundred variants of it used in various software for the C64, the Amiga, the anything.