TYPE DESIGN INFORMATION PAGE last updated on Thu Nov 28 18:57:05 EST 2024

FONT RECOGNITION VIA FONT MOOSE

LUC DEVROYE

ABOUT

Scangraphic

This company evolved in 1983 from Dr Boeger Photosatz GmbH (est. ca. 1934). The timeline:

• 1934: Marius Böger founded the first company to manufacture and market photocopying machines and reprographic devices.
• 1950: Dr. Böger Duplomat Apparate GmbH was founded. Its objective is the production of diazo (blue-printing) machines, equipment for diffusion transfer processing and photographic reproduction.
• 1955: One of the company's first innovative products comes onto the market, the first vertical reproduction camera.
• 1958: Intercop, a Dr. Böger subsidiary, started marketing a range of rapid processing machines, vertical repro cameras and processors for proofs and offset plates.
• 1969: Dr. Böger Photosatz was founded.
• 1976-81: Dr. Böger Photosatz develops its Copytronic phototypesetter. This machine worked on the basis of an opto-mechanical principle, and was set out to compete with Berthold's Diatronic. Hundreds of fonts from the headline library were reworked to meet the needs of the new machines. Although a small number of around 10 machines could be built and sold in Germany and Switzerland, many technical problems with the new equipment drained the financial resources. Thus the Copytronic machine is withdrawn from the market. The company survives by producing its succesful reproduction cameras for Agfa Gevaert. After a few difficult years, Dr. Böger Photosatz sets out to develop its digital typesetting system called Scantext. The output device is a CRT-machine with a resolution of 1000 lines per cm. The Copytronic type library is digitized using a video camera with a typical resolution of 512 x 512 pixels to the em quad. Bernd Holthusen proudly describes it as the fastest type digitizing system in the world. From 1971 until the mid 1980s, it designed and manufactured a family of photolettering machines for headline typesetting and offered a library of more that 1000 film fonts for that application. These were popular under the brand name VISUTEK in the UK (In the rest of Europe they were labelled and sold as Copytype, a trademark by Dr. Böger Photosatz GmbH). Additionally they were the creators and makers of a wide range of process cameras and film processing systems marketed worldwide under the Agfa brand
• 1981: The company produces the phototypesetting system Scantext 1000. By the beginning of 1985 around 750 Bodytypes were available for the Scantext system.
• 1983: The company evolves into Scangraphic. More than 2000 fonts were digitised by the Scangraphic company under the personal supervision of Bernd Holthusen, principally by Volker Küster (1984-1989), Jelle Bosma (1988-1991) and Albert-Jan Pool (1987-1991). These fonts were produced originally for the proprietary "Scantext" CRT digital output device and subsequently for the Scangraphic family of laser imagesetters. Quoting Pool: By the time we had completed the Ikarus Database in order to be able to convert our headline fonts to Postscript, URW had finished its Type1 converter. Our first PostScript product was a Macintosh-CD Rom with the complete library of headline fonts (those with Sh in the name) on it. The fonts were released in Type1 format for the Macintosh environment starting in 1991.
• 1984: Scangraphic starts working on its library of headline fonts, using a proprietary high resulution short vector format which enables output sizes up to 90 mm cap height. After developing its own digital outline font format, Scangraphic starts making use of URW's Ikarus technology to produce a library of headline fonts. As from 1989, Ikarus outlines were made to fit the metrics of the Scangraphic library of bodytype fonts in order to replace the proprietary pixel based font format by digital outlines. Thus the basis was laid for converting the complete library of headline and bodytype fonts into the PostScript Type1 format.
• 1989: The owner/partners sold the business to the large German company Mannesmann AG (and the font collection is sometimes referred to as the Mannesmann-Scangraphic collection), becoming Mannesmann Scangraphic GmbH in Wedel near Hamburg.
• 1994: Mannesmann breaks the umbilical chord and the company becomes Scangraphic Prepress Technology GmbH.
• 2004: the company moves from Wedel/Hamburg to Seligenstadt, Germany. The company still operates on the European mainland making and selling high resolution film and plate imaging systems. The font department is no longer in operation.
• End of 2004: Elsner&Flake buy the font collection, and start selling the fonts under the Elsner&Flake umbrella. The 2500-strong font collection has names that either have a suffix SB (for body types) or SH (for headline types, also called supertypes). Among the tens of examples, we find classics such as Jakob Erbar's Koloss SB.
• 2006: Ulrich Stiehl publishes a document in which he discusses the collection of fonts. He reports clear correspondences with known font families, examples including Ad Grotesk (=Akzidenz-Grotesk by Berthold), Artscript No 1 (=Künstlerschreibschrift fett by Stempel/Linotype), Black (=Block by Berthold), Chinchilla (=Concorde by Berthold), Cyklop (=City by Berthold), Esquire (=Excelsior by Linotype), Europa Grotesk (=Helvetica by Linotype), Europa Grotesk No. 2 (=Neue Helvetica by Linotype), Flash (=Okay by Berthold), Freeborn (=Frutiger by Linotype), Gentleman (=Glypha by Linotype), Grotesk S (=Neuzeit Buch by Stempel), Madame (=Madison by Stempel), Matrix (=Melior by Linotype), October (=Optima by Linotype), Parlament (=Palatino by Linotype), Paxim (=Palatino by Linotype), September (=Sabon by Linotype), Synchron (=Syntax by Stempel), Vega (=Volkswagen VAG Rundschrift). There are also originals like Volker Küster's Today Sans Serif and Neue Luthersche Fraktur, Zapf Renaissance by Hermann Zapf, and Forlane by Jelle Bosma. Küster, Pool, Zapf and Bosma have nothing to do with the non-original fonts in the collection. The typophile community shrugs Stiehl's complaints off.
• 2008: The Scangraphic collection can be bought at Elsner&Flake.

Examples of Scangraphic fonts: Pi Travel+Transportation, Pi Greek Maths, Pi Communication, Pi Signs+Symbols, Futura Round SB, Futura Round SH.

A technical discussion by Yves Peeters. MyFonts link. Link to Scangraphic PrePress Technology GmbH in Seligenstadt. Elsner&Flake shop. Home page.

View the Scangraphic typeface library. Another link to the Scangraphic typeface library.

EXTERNAL LINKS
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INTERNAL LINKS
Extinct 20th century foundries ⦿ Blackletter fonts ⦿ Commercial fonts (small outfits) ⦿ Photo and film type era ⦿ German type scene ⦿ Uncial typefaces ⦿ Cooper Black ⦿ Garalde or Garamond typefaces ⦿ Courier and derived typefaces ⦿ Caslon ⦿ Frederic William Goudy ⦿ Caxton ⦿ Baskerville ⦿ Dingbats (original) ⦿