TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Mon Apr 15 05:46:24 EDT 2024
FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE
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David H. Shepard
Inventor of the optical reader, b. Milwaukee, 1923, d. San Diego, 2007. Shepard majored in electrical engineering at Cornell and earned a masters degree in mathematics from the University of Michigan. Obituary in the New York Times, from which I quote: Mr. Shepard sketched out the familiar boxy numbers on credit cards, called the Farrington B numeric font, on a cocktail napkin at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, his wife said. The shapes were meant to be as simple and open as possible because gasoline station pump islands were among the earliest places optical character recognition was used; the shapes were meant to minimize the effects of smearing with grease, oil and other substances. The font with a 7 that looks like two sides of a rectangle has persisted even as the numbers have faded from use: the magnetic strip on the cards back now carries the necessary information. |
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Luc Devroye ⦿ School of Computer Science ⦿ McGill University Montreal, Canada H3A 2K6 ⦿ lucdevroye@gmail.com ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org ⦿ http://luc.devroye.org/fonts.html |