What font did Tektronix use in their manuals/equipment 1960s?

[setq]

Does anyone know what font Tektronix used in the 1960s in their manuals and on part designators?

Samples below (321A for ref, not mine):

[XOIIO]

maybe try this https://www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/

[setq]

Just ran a scan through that. "Sorry, no close results were found."

[zapta]

You can try asking here http://tekmuseum.ebaman.com/emailme.html

[rollatorwieltje]

Probably Futura, it was used quite a lot.

[StuUK]

Probably Futura, it was used quite a lot.

Highly likely, http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-futura/

[setq]

Futura is exactly it! Thank you rollatorwieltje/StuUK

[TerraHertz]

Excellent, thanks for that!

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/adobe/futura/   want money, like $35 per variant.

Free:
  http://www.futurafontfree.com/                Free versions.
  http://www.megafontbundle.com/downloads/futura-font/   $5 versions

[edpalmer42]

In the past, I've used http://www.identifont.com to find the name of a font.  It's a question/answer system that eventually homes in on the name based on characteristics of the font.  It agrees that the example font is Futura.

Ed

[zapta]

In the past, I've used http://www.identifont.com to find the name of a font.  It's a question/answer system that eventually homes in on the name based on characteristics of the font.

Very neat site. Didn't know such things exist.

BTW, on my mobile phone it uses Motiva Sans font.

[TerraHertz]

Coincidentally I just came across a book The Encyclopaedia Of Type Face, London Blandford Press, 1953, 1958, at my parent's place. Was my grandfather's. Here's the 3 pages for Futura font, scanned and merged to one image. More for historical interest, than any use.

It's sure ironic now that a font called Futura was created in 1927.

[setq]

Thanks for your effort there. It's nice to see some background of these things.

I rather like futura. It has that 1950s-1960s space race feel to it.

[T3sl4co1l]

It's sure ironic now that a font called Futura was created in 1927.

Futurism was strong back then.  Just look at Metropolis!

I suppose it's always been strong.  We've got the Singularity looming ahead of ourselves, right now...

Tim

[timb]

Probably Futura, it was used quite a lot.

Highly likely, http://idsgn.org/posts/know-your-type-futura/

Everyone is always jerking off to Helvetica, like it's Sex Goddess of all Fonts; when in reality, Futura is probably the most influential font of the 20th Century. It's everywhere.

[setq]

Hipsters like Helvetica. There was a fad in London for a bit with them all wearing stuff branded Helvetica. Well I say all, but just the design hipsters. I nearly bought a comic sans T-shirt just to annoy them.

[TerraHertz]

Real Men use only Times New Roman.

[David Hess]

Arial, Helvetica, and Futura are very similar with Futura being even more plain.  I often choose Arial or some system font for probably the same reasons that led Tektronix to use Futura.

I like Futura's lowercase A and straight descender on its lowercase Y.  I do not like its descending uppercase J or the straight descender on its lowercase J.

The improvements I would like to see in a technical font are a horizontal slash through upper case Z to distinguish it from 2, maybe a horizontal slash through 7, and a diagonal slash through 0.

[timb]

Arial, Helvetica, and Futura are very similar with Futura being even more plain.  I often choose Arial or some system font for probably the same reasons that led Tektronix to use Futura.

I like Futura's lowercase A and straight descender on its lowercase Y.  I do not like its descending uppercase J or the straight descender on its lowercase J.

The improvements I would like to see in a technical font are a horizontal slash through upper case Z to distinguish it from 2, maybe a horizontal slash through 7, and a diagonal slash through 0.

Adobe's Source Code Pro is my favorite technical font. I use it absolutely everywhere; from my terminal to labels on component drawers.

It's monospaced and comes in a number of different weights, from ExtraLight to Black.


The best part is, it's completely free! Adobe even has the source up on GitHub, if you're into editing or building OpenType fonts yourself, which I've actually been meaning to do. I'd like to see a small strike added to the Z.

[Alex Eisenhut]

What did they use on the plastic spines of the 1960s manuals?

[David Hess]

What did they use on the plastic spines of the 1960s manuals?

It is the little difficult to tell because the spines have no lower case but they did not use Futura; the 7 and 9 do not match.  The R has a recurve so it is not Arial.  It looks like Helvetica.  The documentary text in the manual itself also looks like Helvetica.  The parts list at least in my 7904 manual uses a serif font that looks like it came off of a typewriter.

[TerraHertz]

Adobe's Source Code Pro is my favorite technical font. I use it absolutely everywhere; from my terminal to labels on component drawers.
It's monospaced and comes in a number of different weights, from ExtraLight to Black.
The best part is, it's completely free! Adobe even has the source up on GitHub, if you're into editing or building OpenType fonts yourself, which I've actually been meaning to do. I'd like to see a small strike added to the Z.

That's quite nice, thanks. For a virtual on-screen keyboard project I've been using Tahoma, but that is nicer. Except for the '%' sign. _Why_ did they break the slash? Oh well, source available.
This project is stalled while I try to learn how to use FontForge.  http://fontforge.org/

Why am I doing a virtual keyboard when there are dozens already? Because as a component of working on an OS, I'm going back to basics and adding a lot of things to ASCII that those guys back then didn't think of. Lacking which, led to a lot of bullshit workarounds and conceptual potholes in later comp-sci evolution. Also part of my 'file formats for representing printed works' effort. And for this I need a keyboard allowing typing of 'rejigged ASCII' for development work. (Yes I have a better name for it, but not going to blow that up by mentioning prematurely.)
Pic below is a screen grab of an early rough keyboard version, in progress, looking like a standard keyboard just to keep it simple. It's all html & javascript, not yet functional. The final layout will be quite different.