Television Signal Analysis
Contributed by Grant Hutchinson
on Nov 21st, 2018. Artwork published in
May 1955
.
Photo: Grant Hutchinson. License: CC BY-NC.
Title page from Television Signal Analysis, a booklet published by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (otherwise known as the original AT&T) in 1955. The headline face is a version of Phenix American featuring rather intriguing alternate g and y glyphs.
The 1957 version of this booklet is available from the Internet Archive.
6 Comments on “Television Signal Analysis”
Thank you for your contribution, Grant!
I checked Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces Of The Twentieth Century—a fabulous resource that never ceases to amaze me—and learned that Phenix is a spin-off of News Gothic Extra Condensed, “with several characters redesigned in the ‘round’ fashion of the time.” And indeed the g and y appear to be taken from News Gothic Extra Condensed. You could just as well say that this is News Gothic XC with the E, A and N taken from Phenix. In today’s OpenType format, Phenix would probably be packaged as a stylistic “Art Deco” set of News Gothic.
Thanks for the additional background, Florian. I was familiar with News Gothic Condensed, but had no idea it was so similar to Phenix.
Hello,
pleasant typeface of course, typically 40s. But in fact much narrower than News Gothic Extra Condensed. And the design of the lowercases is more “square” – like a Univers 39 or 49.
Are you referring to Phenix? As mentioned above, it’s a version of News Gothic Extra Condensed, with some glyphs modified. The width is the same and the design of the lowercase is identical, apart from g k t w y. See specimens for News Gothic Extra Condensed and Phenix.
Were you thinking of News Gothic Condensed (without Extra), maybe?
Hello,
Since I have a Phoenix American by Dan X. Solo (which I was looking for its anteriority), I followed your indications and quickly compared it with the News Gothic Extra Condensed, which I also have.
Regarding that it is a Bitstream version, I didn’t known that it was very different, more “oval” and wider than the original by ATF. And in fact, as indicated on the News Gothic Extra Cond. page, drawn by M. F. Benton.
It gave me the opportunity to see the difference between Bitstream’s News Gothic Extra Condensed and the BOLD Extra Condensed, whose lower case are ultimately closer to the original.
This is precisely the kind of exchange that interests me, as close as possible to the drawing of the letters. There’s so much to say between two Garamonds!
I see! Yes, Bitstream’s digital font named News Gothic Extra Condensed is not as condensed as ATF’s metal original. Our page is for the latter.