Mark Owens on the concrete: “HELP INJURED some incoherent message on struck at the concrete slope, DRIVER CALL POLICE.” the steaming glass.”3 slashing his A’s and X’s side by side.” Maitland traces out Soon, storm clouds gather and This scene of writing and words for Proctor to copy, but A it begins to pour, and Maitland erasure, interrupted by the soon enthusiasm gets the best is forced to take cover, fashion- interlude in the basement print of him and he begins to mix Note ing a crude shelter in the crum- shop, traces the contours of up the letters “into an inde- bling remnants of a basement western typographic history — cipherable mass,” eventually on the doorway. Bruised and feverish, from the marks made by the rubbing out the message and he gazes down: human hand and the mechan- refusing to go on.4 ical reproduction of text and Type A small printing shop had image made possible by the once been here, and a few printing press, to a vision of From J. G. Ballard’s 1974 novel copper-backed letterpress an automated, machinic writ- Geoffroy Concrete Island culminates in blocks lay around his feet. ing that exceeds both human Tory, Champ a scene of writing. Speeding Maitland picked one up and agency and comprehension. Fleury, along the M4 outside , examined the cloudy figures So too, the contraction of 1529 architect Robert Maitland of a dark-suited man and a the island in Maitland’s mind crashes his Jaguar through a white-haired woman. As he to the space of the crashed guardrail and into a vast trian- listened to the rain he thought Jaguar is mirrored by its The failure of Maitland’s gle of waste ground beneath of his parents’ divorce; the expansion in Ballard’s narra- writing lesson, read off against an intersection of overpasses, uncertainties of this period, tive to encompass the recent the earlier episode in the ruins finding himself injured and when he was eight years old, history of Great Britain: as of the printshop, foregrounds unable to climb the steep seemed to be replicated in he explores the overgrown what remains “uncertain” embankments to rescue. As the negative image on the rubble Maitland discovers and “indecipherable” in the night falls he manages to ignite letterpress plate, in the reverse the remains of a churchyard, mechanization of human lan- the engine of the mangled Jag tones of this unknown man Edwardian houses, an air-raid guage. For, the writing lesson with the car’s cigarette lighter, and woman.2 shelter, and a postwar cin- is the lynchpin of all western but the brief, intense blaze ema. Similarly, the shattered . Beginning in the fails to halt the rush of traf- It is a brief, reflective moment, body of the Jaguar echoes fifteenth century, humanist fic overhead. Left to sleep in and when Maitland emerges Maitland’s own, just as the handwriting, secured through the charred hulk of the auto- following the storm he notices inhabitants he soon encoun- a pedagogy of imitation and mobile, Maitland awakens to that the letters of his hand- ters — a radical hippie dropout a disciplining of the body, notice a retaining wall across scrawled message have been named Jane Sheppard and a transformed the hand into a the island: “The rain-washed “reduced to black smudges.” brutish former acrobat known writing machine.5 While low- concrete shone brightly in the Delirious with fever, he finds only as Proctor — double his ercase roman letters emerged sunlight like an empty notice- that “the rounded smears riven psyche. The scene itself from this prosthetic pen-in- board. A message scrawled were exactly those of a wind- is doubled, too, when Maitland hand imitating the “litterae across it in three-feet-high shield wiper,” and wonders: attempts to trick a reluctant antiquae” of Carolingian letters would be legible to “Was he still trapped inside Proctor into spelling out a manuscripts, capitals traced drivers on the motorway.”1 his car? Was the entire island rescue message on the retain- their origins to the letters Desperately in need of writ- an extension of the Jaguar, its ing wall under the pretense of engraved on classical roman ing instruments, he harvests windshield and windows trans- teaching him to write his own monuments, the work of stone the blackened, burnt rubber formed by his delirium into name: “Already the wavering carvers wielding the simple terminals from the engine’s these embankments? Perhaps letters of his first alphabet machines of hammer and distributor caps, using them to the windshield wipers had had become strong and well- chisel. Geoffroy Tory’s 1529 258 mark out “in wavering letters” jammed… and were tracing formed. Using both hands he Champ Fleury was one of a 259 number of Renaissance trea- and advisor to the Monotype use the following year, it has of considerable speculation. tises that subsequently sought Corporation, leading to his become in subsequent decades Was it merely a type speci- to delineate the proportions appointment as “typographical one of the most recognizable men of Monotype ? Or of the ideal Roman capital advisor” to William Lints- of all time. perhaps it was a photographic “according to the human body Smith, the manager of The reproduction of a much and face,” thus submitting Times.6 A series of trials fol- older, original page of Robert both typography and the body lowed in which sample pages Granjon’s Gros Cicero type, to the logic of geometry and of the paper were set in a first cut in the sixteenth cen- Detail from The the instrumentality of the variety of existing faces, but tury, or a later impression of Monotype grid, compass, and rule. With Morison was dissatisfied and it, as typographer Recorder the invention of the printing decided that a new, supremely has argued? 10 Measurements 21 (1932) press the humanist’s bicam- legible, economical, modern, from the first metal types for eral script was further adapted and decidedly English type- bear a to mechanical reproduction face was needed. A special However, with Morison’s close mathematical resem- through the cutting of punches committee was convened, and death in 1967 his biographers blance to those for Monotype and the casting of molds, a at a meeting on January 28, almost immediately began to Plantin, and the speed with process that largely remained 1931, two approaches were identify inconsistencies in the which the initial designs were unchanged until the end of the approved: a thickened version official account of his role completed would suggest some nineteenth century, giving rise of ’s , and a in the design of Times New form of preexisting model, to the digitized roman “modernized Plantin.” Roman.8 Although he could since Renaissance print sam- we use today. render hand-drawn “comps” ples provide only rough out- Focusing his energies on this for the creation of layouts, lines to work from, requiring second option, according to Morison was not a drafts- considerable, time-consuming Morison he “excogitated” the man, and it was unlikely that refinement and recasting.11 Stanley design of Times New Roman, he had “pencilled” the forms Morison, “pencilled the original set of and given them to Lardent 1889–1967, Sample in a later drawings, and handed them to to redraw. Later, in Printing impres- portrait Victor Lardent, a draughtsman (1954), Morison sion of Robert in the publicity department of recounted a decision “to Granjon’s Printing House Square [ where modify the normal Plantin,” Gros Cicero The Times was located ] whom suggesting that existing metal type In what follows I thus want he considered capable of pro- types had been used as a start- to use Ballard’s narrative to ducing an unusually firm and ing point. When questioned in reflect on one of the more lean line.”7 It was from these January 1968 Victor Lardent Still, this ur-form of Times curious episodes in recent finished drawings that the final was unable to recall specifics, New Roman — and who was typographic history — the metal punches, in both text but did tell biographer James really responsible for it — controversy surrounding and titling sizes, were cut by Moran unequivocally that has remained elusive, and the creation of Times New Monotype after a large number Morison had not given him Morison’s own remarks in a Roman, perhaps the most of revisions and refinements. any drawings, but instead had 1937 letter to the American ubiquitous of all typefaces. In the interim the matter of “handed him a photographic type historian D. B. Updike So the story goes, in 1929 an the change of the paper’s copy of a page from a book only served to cloud the issue: advertising request by The masthead to an all-caps roman printed by Plantin to use as “It is my one effort at design- Times of London prompted a was resolved, and thus, on a basis.”9 ing a fount. I wish it could be tirade against the paper’s out- October 3, 1932, Times New redesigned, but it seems to dated typography by Stanley Roman debuted in the pages The precise nature of this be doing its job day by day in Morison, imminent British of The Times to universal “photographic copy” has sub- The Times. It has the merit of 260 typographer, type historian, acclaim. Released for general sequently become the source looking as if it had not been 261 designed by anyone in partic- Burgess.14 Parker described According to Parker, in 1923 It was a bold claim, made on ular.”12 Who designed Times the “discovery of an ancient Lanston then attempted to the scantest of evidence, which New Roman, then? Morison set of pattern letters” among sell Series 54 to a fledgling occasioned a reply in the pages himself does not seem entirely “the remnants of the Lanston Time magazine under the of Printing History by four sure, and the doublings that Monotype Machine Company name Time 54, even going so respected figures in the field: trouble the accounts of its of Philadelphia,” which far as to create a trial setting attorney and printer Harold creation would seem to require had been purchased by the and masthead design, but its Berliner, Morison biographer a lost original of uncertain Canadian printer and typog- development was also never Nicolas Barker, type designer agency, a “photographic copy” rapher Gerald Giampa, and completed. Jim Rimmer, and president of whose adaptation would documentation tying the the Printing Historical Society appear to be designed by no designs, designated Series 54, John Dreyfus.16 Parker’s one in particular. Indeed, to Burgess. Time 54 Tracy, in his summary assess- In a measured, if rather masthead ment of Times New Roman Although Giampa, citing blistering, rebuttal the four compari- son concludes that its “chief a vague “bond of confi- respondents dismantled defect” lies in that it “lacks dentiality,” had withdrawn And so it only remained for Parker’s argument, sweep- the insignia of true creation,” access to the archive, Parker the drawings and pattern ing aside its fog of irrelevant precisely what Morison finds explained that he had uncov- letters to make their way, in details, remaining careful to to recommend it.13 ered evidence to corroborate 1931, from Philadelphia to the avoid attributing “dubious a rumor that had circulated Monotype Works in Salfords motives” to Parker himself. in the “drawing office at outside London and into the Berliner finds no trace of the Mergenthaler Linotype in the hands of , “bond of confidentiality” William 1960s and ’70s” that “Times then out of his depth and that Giampa cited as the Starling Burgess, Roman had been designed by a struggling with the design of reason for his withdrawal of 1878–1947, naval architect in Philadelphia a “modernized Plantin” for the archive, nor any draw- in an 15 undated who had committed suicide.” The Times. ings marked Series 54 in portrait What followed was a highly the Lanston holdings at the detailed set of speculations Parker provides neither repro- Smithsonian Institution in relying heavily on Burgess’s ductions of the original draw- Washington, DC. biography and second-hand ings he claims to have seen, Fast-forward to 1994, when information suggesting that nor any independent evidence. the question of the origin of in 1904 Burgess had drawn Instead, he relies on an elabo- Double- stamped Times New Roman gained and commissioned Series 54 rate set of formal comparisons Lanston new traction thanks to Mike from Lanston Monotype, the using digitized versions of Series 54 pattern Parker, a former director at American counterpart to the Monotype Plantin, Lanston letter re- Linotype and co-founder of British Monotype Corporation Series 54, the Lardent draw- produced Bitstream, one of the first for use by his design firm. ings, and Monotype Times by Parker digital type foundries. In his Although work on the face New Roman alongside pho- article “W. Starling Burgess: had already begun, Burgess, tographs of what he claims Barker, in turn, questions Type Designer?” in the journal in Parker’s account, was soon are original brass Lanston Parker’s appeal to digitized Printing History Parker made distracted by a new-found pattern letters, a capital “B” versions of typefaces and, the radical suggestion that the interest in aviation and, follow- and lowercase “f” stamped after close scrutiny of the test original drawings for the ing a 1918 fire in his Boston twice in their lower left corners setting of Time 54 and the trial were in fact created in the early offices, found himself unable with the numerals 54 and 362, Time masthead reproduced 1900s by the American yacht to pay for the completion of Monotype’s series numbers in Parker’s essay, shows that designer, aviation pioneer, the project, and Series 54 for both Lanston 54 and Times neither could have been pro- 262 and engineer William Starling was shelved. New Roman. duced as early as he claims. 263 Reviewing the accepted pre- request to accompany a 1993 extant Burgess letters, note- This detour into the gentle- history of Times New Roman revival of Time 54, for which books, autobiographical writ- manly world of typographic and citing extant memos from a “cloudy outline” and digital ings, or in his surviving library controversy is traversed by a the Monotype type drawing files were supplied. Moreover, to typography or to the art and complex series of doublings office in 1931, Barker con- Rimmer states that Giampa craft of type design.” “Nor, that locate the development cludes that the “photographic had also given him a set of finally,” the author adds, “was of Times New Roman firmly copy” handed to Lardent by punches identical to the “54” Burgess, despite taking basic within the “body machine Morison must have been an that appears on the double- courses in mechanical draw- complex” of the early twenti- image of a later printing of stamped pattern letters. ing at Harvard, a proficient eth century.24 Naval architect, Granjon’s Gros Cicero type, draftsman.”22 aviation pioneer, and later likely Max Roose’s Index co-designer of the Dymaxion Characterum Architypographiae So the question remains, car with Buckminster Fuller, of 1905.17 The proof, he who designed Times New Burgess doubles Morison, Mike argues, is the appearance Roman? Parker, a typographic authority on the mechani- Parker, of the lowercase “a” in the expert and respected indus- zation of typography and a 1929– 2014, final design, a remnant of the try veteran, could hardly be railroad enthusiast who rode c. 1970s substitution of an “a” from described as a crank or a on the footplate of a Gresley another font when Granjon’s dupe. Giampa, meanwhile, A1 Pacific locomotive all the original types were acquired by who died in 2009, is a shad- way to Edinburgh and enthu- the Plantin-Moretus Museum owy figure whose motives siastically attended the depar- in Antwerp and used to print One might assume that these remain obscure — financial ture of the high-speed Flying Roose’s Index, which then detailed counterarguments gain? character assassination? Scotsman on its first non-stop served as the model for Times would have finally put Parker’s legitimate historical recovery? trip along the London and New Roman.18 claims to rest, but to the end As recounted in the Financial North Eastern Railway.25 of his life he never wavered. Times, a 2000 flood destroyed Instead, he proceeded to any remaining evidence in the Gros Cicero, develop Giampa’s “Burgess” Lanston Monotype archive Burgess Plantin, into a full-fledged typeface in that Giampa had purchased, and Fuller in Modern and six weights, renamed Starling, and supposed original docu- Times Mechanix New which was commercially ments reviewed by Parker in Magazine, Roman October released in 2009. To accom- the Smithsonian in 1996 are 1933 pany the release Parker’s tale reportedly contaminated and regarding the “true” origin of no longer accessible. A 1941 Perhaps most damning, Times New Roman was largely bomb blast near Monotype’s Barker further suggests that taken as fact, and a number London offices had also Like J. G. Ballard’s Maitland the photographs of the dou- of press outlets picked up the destroyed many of the original behind the wheel of his ble-stamped pattern letters in story, including the Financial records concerning Morison’s Jaguar, both were men whose fact depict patterns for Times Times.20 With Parker’s death work on Times New Roman.23 “intimacy with machines” is New Roman from 1961, onto in 2014 his theory circulated Still, surely an authority like of a piece with a culture of which the numerals “54” had once again, and today, no less Parker must have seem some- locomotion in which agency been added after the fact.19 an authority than Wikipedia thing that convinced him, and is uncertain, and the human Rimmer, quoted at length in includes a mention of Burgess the persistence of the Burgess body, no less than the type a letter to Dreyfus, reveals in its entry on Times New story and its grudging accep- body, is submitted to new dis- that the fragmentary “Burgess Roman.21 Nevertheless, a tance within design history ciplinary regimes — the time- Italic” that Parker also repro- comprehensive biography of points, at the very least, to an table, machine work, and the duced in his essay was in fact Burgess published in 2015 unresolved need to come to grid — that are shadowed by 264 drawn by him at Giampa’s cites no “reference whatever in terms with its creation. the spectre of the automaton.26 265 In fact, in a promotional pam- By way of conclusion this was said, had been shocked be Invisible,” first delivered phlet published by The Times question of agency suggests when a woman arrived to take as a lecture in 1930 and still in conjunction with the debut one more doubling, and a the job. read by every undergraduate of the new redesign of the silence that thus far marks design student, in which she paper Morison explained that a glaring absence from any Warde and Morison would advocates for the transparent the need for the new typeface account of Stanley Morison: become lifelong friends and quality of good typography. was a respose to the dramatic the figure of .28 close colleagues, and it was The essay could easily serve as changes in reading habits to her that he sent a cable a brief for Times New Roman, occasioned by the acceleration announcing the committee’s now so commonplace that one of human transport: approval of the decision to contemporary commentator

Beatrice change the masthead of The has stated that, “To look at Warde, It is evident that there must Times, the final element in the Times New Roman is to gaze 1900– paper’s conversion to Times into the void.”30 1969, be changes in typography as in an long as our social habits are New Roman: “DIRECTORS AND undated open to variation. When it ALL EDITORIAL EMINENTISSIMI Recalling the “negative image” portrait was founded, The Times was UNANIMOUS ROMAN HEADING.”29 of the “unknown man and largely read in coffeehouses; Morison, who famously dis- woman” that occasions Robert in the nineteenth century it dained the use of first names, Maitland’s reverie in the ruined came to be read in trains; Former librarian for ATC, addressed his letters to Warde printshop in Concrete Island, to-day it is largely read in the at this time “Dear P,” and it it is tempting to imagine what cars and airliners. Reading Company, and ex-wife of was thus as Paul Beaujon — a Beatrice Warde’s role in the habits, dependent on social , director male moniker that seems to development of Times New habits, will not remain con- of printing at Princeton have been something between Roman might have been, and stant. Neither must news- University, Beatrice Warde an open secret, an inside joke, the status of the still-elusive paper typography remain joined the Monotype and a mark of respect — that “photographic copy” that constant.27 Corporation in London in Beatrice Warde came to join Lardent claims to have been 1927 as editor of its house the fraternity of men who led handed by Morison. As an Who better, then, to have journal, The Monotype the typographic renaissance accomplished type scholar and designed Times New Roman Recorder, and was soon pro- that began after World War I, researcher Warde most cer- than an architect-engineer moted to head of publicity, although she was still unable tainly knew her way around an and future car designer? Or a position she held until her to attend meetings of the archive, and as an American perhaps “Burgess” might sim- retirement in 1960. Warde’s Double Crown Club. and former librarian at ATC ply stand for the uncertainties initial appointment had come she had industry connections that obtain in the collision of thanks to an article she had in the States. Her ex-husband, bodies and technologies whose written for the typographic Frederic, we know, attended Beatrice contours the writing scenes journal that Morison edited, the Lanston Monotype School Warde, The Crys- in Ballard’s Concrete Island , in which she had in Philadelphia to learn how tal Goblet: circumscribe, and which lie at unraveled the question of to work the machinery.31 As a Sixteen Essays on the very heart of typographic the origins of the typeface publicist at Monotype, Warde Typogra- history, from the humanist pen , having tracked would also, no doubt, have had phy, 1955 and the printing press straight down the original sixteenth- regular dealings with the pub- through to the TextEdit soft- century punches in Europe. licity department at The Times, ware that this essay is being It was an impressive piece of and could have recommended written in — the “no one in typographic detective work, Warde’s other great contribu- Victor Lardent — whose primary particular” whose authorship published by Warde anony- tion to the theory of typogra- occupation was the drafting Morison takes as “the chief mously under the pseudonym phy is the essay “The Crystal of advertisements — for his 266 merit” of Times New Roman. Paul Beaujon. Monotype, it Goblet, or Printing Should “unusually firm and lean line.” 267 1 J. G. Ballard, 11 Ibid., 196–97. 21 Wikipedia, 30 Matthew Could “Paul Beaujon” — that Auto Body Collision is typeset Concrete Island http://en.wikipedia. Butterick, doubly-gendered vanishing in Autospaced and (: Farrar, 12 David org/wiki/Times_ Typography for Straus and Giroux, McKitterick, New_Roman. Lawyers (Houston: mediator —have been the Monotype Times New Roman 1974), 62. ed., Stanley Jones McClure source of the “photographic Seven. The work reproduced Morison and D. B. 22 Llewelllyn Publishing, 2010). 2 Ibid., 65. Updike: Selected Howland III, No copy” that served as the model incorporates letterforms includ- Correspondence Ordinary Being: 31 Loxley, “The for Times New Roman? That, ing Times New Roman and 3 Ibid., 67. (New York: The W. Starling Burgess: Doves and the we cannot know. After all, Condensed Light. Moretus Press, Inventor, Naval Serpent,” 126. 4 Ibid., 151–52. 1979), 185. Architect, Poet, invisibility, Warde insisted, is Aviation Pioneer, and the sign of good typography, 5 See Jonathan 13 Tracy, Letters of Master of American Goldberg, Writing Credit, 210. Design (Jaffrey, NH: just as every type designer Matter: From David R. Godine, knows that the spaces between the Hands of the 14 Mike Parker, 2015), 65. English Renaissance “W. Starling letters — the counterforms — (Stanford: Stanford Burgess: Type 23 Alas, “The are just as important as the University Press, Designer?,” Printing History of Times 1990). History 16, nos. 1–2 New Roman marks on the page. So too, (1994): 52–87. Typeface.” the questions and doublings 6 For the account that persist around the design that follows see 15 Ibid., 52. 24 See Mark James Moran, Seltzer, Bodies and of Times New Roman point Stanley Morison: 16 Harold Berliner, Machines (New to the collision of bodies and His Typographic Nicolas Barker, Jim York: Routledge, Achievement Rimmer, and John 1992). technologies that shape the (New York: Dreyfus, “Starling development of modern letter- Hastings House Burgess, No Type 25 Barker, Stanley Publishers, 1971), Designer,” Printing Morison, 268, 295. forms — and the lapses and 123–38; Nicolas History 19, no. 1 failures that attend them. Barker, Stanley (1998): 3–22. 26 Seltzer, Bodies Morison (London: and Machines, 17–18. Macmillan, 1972), 17 Ibid., 15. 268–71, 283–302; 27 Stanley and Stanley 18 See http:// Morison, Printing Morison, A Tally typophile.com/ The Times: A Record of Types (Boston: node/53050 and of the Changes David R. Godine, Hendrik D.L. Introduced in the 1999), 105–9. Vervliet, The Issue for October 3, Paleotypography 1932 (London: The 7 Morison, A Tally of the French Times of London, of Types, 105. Renaissance: 1932). Selected Papers in 8 The uncertain- Sixteenth-Century 28 The historical ties regarding Typefaces (Leiden account that follows Morison’s version and Boston: Brill, relies on Simon of events described 2008), 226–27. Loxley, “The Doves here relies on and the Serpent: the discussion 19 Berliner et al., Stanley Morison in Walter Tracy, “Starling Burgess, and the Wardes,” Letters of Credit: A No Type Designer,” in Type: The Secret View of Type Design 18. History of Letters (Boston: David (London and New R. Godine, 2003), 20 Joel Alas, York: I. B. Tauris 194–210. “The History of & Co. Ltd, 2004), the Times New 123–35. 9 Moran, Stanley Roman Typeface,” Morison, 128. The , 29 Barker, Stanley Here, Moran is August 1, 2009, Morison, 296. paraphrasing http://www.ft.com/ Lardent. cms/s/0/a2fa033e- 7ca1-11de-a7bf- 10 Tracy, Letters of 00144feabdc0. Credit, 196–202. html#axzz3XJ4b- KQdT. 268 269