Arthur Scherbius
Hybridised Practices // Approach 005
The machinery of the digital counter
As the digital counter is going to be a translator, a converter of your analog action, I thought about the transformative process itself. The transmission, the transfer and the ideas behind this procedure reminded me of the field of encryption or decryption.
In cryptography, encryption is the process of transforming information using an algorithm (called cipher) to make it unreadable to anyone except those possessing special knowledge, usually referred to as a key. The result of the process is encrypted information. In many contexts, the word encryption also implicitly refers to the reverse process, decryption, to make the encrypted information readable again (i.e. to make it unencrypted). [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]
Within this research I came across a Patent of a Ciphering Machine by A. Scherbius. I will not rebuild this machine, but I think as an inspiration or supporting background it is quite helpful for the animation of the counter in After Effects (or Maya)
Arthur Scherbius [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] Arthur Scherbius (20 October 1878 – 13 May 1929) was a German electrical engineer who patented an invention for a mechanical cipher machine, later sold as the Enigma machine. (...)
Henning M. Lederer | MA Digital Arts FT | +44 (0)7551 960 327 | www.led-r-r.net 1 Hybridised Practices // Approach 005 B L O O D A N B O C P D Q E R F S 5 G T 4 H U 3 I V 2 J W Rotator with 27 Plates 1 K X 360°/27=13,33333333333° 1 Rotator with 6 Plates L Y 360°/6=60° M Z
The typeface of the digital counter
As the digital counter is going to be a kind of mechanical display, similar to a split-flap display on train stations, I was looking for a monospaced typeface from the beginning of the 20th century. By this, the historical and technical dimensions within the project are maintained and emphasized. ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz 1234567890 Venus® Egyptienne Font // Designer: Bauer’sche Gießerei // Year: 1907
The Venus type family is a historic hot metal face with left slanted weights that is used for the german cartographic map production. Nevertheless, I think that this typeface will fit aesthetically. And as the historical and technical dimension are maintained, it should be working.
Henning M. Lederer | MA Digital Arts FT | +44 (0)7551 960 327 | www.led-r-r.net 2 Hybridised Practices // Approach 005
The following pages depict some facts about typefaces and typewriter-related fonts:
Slab serif [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] In typography, a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif or Egyptian) typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket (feature connecting the strokes to the serifs). Some consider slab serifs to be a subset of modern serif typefaces.
Because of their bold appearance, they are most commonly used in large headlines and advertisements but are seldom used in body text. The exception is those that are monospaced, because of their usage in typewriters, but that is declining as electronic publishing becomes more common. (...)
Typewriter model (Sub-classifications of slab-serif) Typewriter slab serif typefaces are named for their use in strike-on typewriting. These faces originated in monospaced format with fixed-width, meaning that every character takes up exactly the same amount of horizontal space. This feature is necessitated by the nature of the typewriter apparatus. Examples include Courier, Courier New, and Prestige Elite.
>>> Monospaced typefaces [From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia] Monospaced fonts are typefaces in which every glyph is the same width (as opposed to variable-width fonts, where the w and m are wider than most letters, and the i is narrower). The first monospaced typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only move the same distance forward with each letter typed. Their use continued with early computers, which could only display a single font. Although modern computers can display any desired typeface, monospaced fonts are still important for computer programming, terminal emulation, and for laying out tabulated data in plain text documents. Examples of monospaced typefaces are Courier, Prestige Elite, and Monaco. There exist Roman, Blackletter, and Gaelic monospaced typefaces.
Century of the typewriter, Wilfried A. Beeching Bournemouth: British Typewriter Museum Publishing, 1990
TYPE AND TYPE STYLES
There are in the world today a number of factories devoted entirely to the manufacture of type and the main ones are Alfred Ransmayer & Albert Rodrian in Berlin, Setag SA in Switzerland, Novatype S.A. in Switzerland, and Tangens-Type GmbH in West Germany. In addition, many typewriter manufacturers produce their own type and augment the range of type styles by also buying from various specialist firms. Before World War II, most typewriters were equipped with the normal and familiar Pica typewriter type with ten spaces to the inch. The number of spaces to the inch is known as the ’pitch’. During and after World War II, twelve spaces to the inch became more popular and type styles became much more sophisticated. Some examples of these are shown in the Figures 2.304-2.325. Each manufacturer continually adds to the range of type styles available. In addition, of course, there are the Cyrillic type styles (such as Russian), also Hebrew and Arabic where the carriage moves in the opposite direction, that is from right to left instead of the usual left to right.
Henning M. Lederer | MA Digital Arts FT | +44 (0)7551 960 327 | www.led-r-r.net 3 Hybridised Practices // Approach 005
Henning M. Lederer | MA Digital Arts FT | +44 (0)7551 960 327 | www.led-r-r.net 4