> Carve something into plastic, on the other hand, and it can survive decades. Substitute plastic for metal, and you just turned decades into centuries.
"I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."
I've been saying for years that future archaeologists will wonder at these mysterious emblems they dig up, generally associated with a large deposit of what was once highly refined iron, aluminium and copper. About half a metre wide and 11cm high, made of incredibly durable plastic obviously intended to last for centuries, if not millenia.
And they'll puzzle over the inscriptions, "G809 BGG", "R420 BRL", "RFS 131Y", "SJ12 EXW", "RE51 CUE" - this on some huge chunk of steel, easily three times as big as the rest, and so many others.
The comment described them as made out of plastic, while license plates here are usually made from aluminum, so I was thinking more along the lines of some kind of packaging.
The site is killing my brave browser. Maybe long thin transoceanic paths, or phase of the moon.
So many partially loaded images.
But definitely worth the wait. A great read. I liked the almost mimetic quality of "which slightly broken font plate is being reused to make the broken "3" I keep seeing" which is a classic detective novel trope, e.g. Lord Peter Whimsey in "strong poison" and a typewriter glitch he recognises.
There's 600 photos and one 500 MB video. It seems like they are being served directly from the owner's Apache server from response headers. Server could be overloaded?
Yea, but if I bought coffee table books and this was printed by Taschen, I'd buy it.
That typeface is so familiar. One imagines a great big red "reset" up in the clouds, benevolent creator pondering pressing, this is definitely the font on the button. I can smell machine oil, hear 50hz hum just looking at these labels.
I think my ad blocker was the problem. Disabling it didn't turn it into the fastest website in the world—the images loaded in about 15 seconds—but that was a lot better than the never loading I was getting before disabling it.
I started reading the article with a feeling of "I don't recognize this at all" from the first few images that slowly loaded.
Then we got to the metal plates in elevators and the other uses, and my brain immediately turned around and said "Of course you know this; you've seen this a hundred thousand times.. you absolutely know it even if you don't consciously think about it."
A font forked at least a dozen times over the decades, with forks upon forks upon forks, full of nostalgia for times past.
Funny, I'd actually noticed that this font was knocking around in various places, particularly in American media, without giving it too much conscious thought. Although I had decided that I liked it. It's very 60s, mechanical, tactile, and almost cute in its ignorance of typography rules that would come to be unquestionable. It's nice to put a name to the font.
The Gorton machines being initially developed by a lens manufacturer made a lot of sense given the 1920s brochure material the author included earlier. That material (unlike the later versions presented) focused on the machine's ability to do circular engravings (exactly the speciality the lens text presumably needed)
I love this article, it's been posted here several times before. The first time I read it I had been in New York and was waiting in JFK to fly home, so naturally it resonated.
In some ways it's THE perfect hacker news article. It's about design sensibilities and typography, and as we know all HN readers have great taste, so it tickles that part of the brain.
It's mechanical and analogue, so it harkens back to a time when engineers built things with their hands and their work had a physical manifestation in the real world. So for the former 'physical' engineers who turned to tech for better career prospect (like me) it tickles that part of the brain too!
It has an air of Americana in that New York is its most iconic city and this article is drenched in 'look how good we used to make things', and then it delightfully leads us back to old blighty for the Anglophiles.
For an article romantic about a font, it's perfection. Catnip for nerds.
Jesus, who thought loading hundred of MB of images in a single page was a good idea?
Normally I hate the pointless use of javascript in basic text and image websites, but lazy image loading would probably stop this server having been hugged to death
At the same time, Gmail is using 244MB.
My average tab opened is about 30MB, so the difference is only 3 times the memory.
Probably only the network connection struggles for a few seconds in my phone, and that's it.
"I write these words in steel, for anything not set in metal cannot be trusted."
And they'll puzzle over the inscriptions, "G809 BGG", "R420 BRL", "RFS 131Y", "SJ12 EXW", "RE51 CUE" - this on some huge chunk of steel, easily three times as big as the rest, and so many others.
What could they mean?
So many partially loaded images.
But definitely worth the wait. A great read. I liked the almost mimetic quality of "which slightly broken font plate is being reused to make the broken "3" I keep seeing" which is a classic detective novel trope, e.g. Lord Peter Whimsey in "strong poison" and a typewriter glitch he recognises.
That typeface is so familiar. One imagines a great big red "reset" up in the clouds, benevolent creator pondering pressing, this is definitely the font on the button. I can smell machine oil, hear 50hz hum just looking at these labels.
Then we got to the metal plates in elevators and the other uses, and my brain immediately turned around and said "Of course you know this; you've seen this a hundred thousand times.. you absolutely know it even if you don't consciously think about it."
A font forked at least a dozen times over the decades, with forks upon forks upon forks, full of nostalgia for times past.
I've tried it on the computer with "Gorton Digital" and that's just terrible, I can't recommend it. The spacing/kerning is all wrong.
Hoping someone takes on the project of making a nice digital font, potentially a mono-spaced one too.
In some ways it's THE perfect hacker news article. It's about design sensibilities and typography, and as we know all HN readers have great taste, so it tickles that part of the brain.
It's mechanical and analogue, so it harkens back to a time when engineers built things with their hands and their work had a physical manifestation in the real world. So for the former 'physical' engineers who turned to tech for better career prospect (like me) it tickles that part of the brain too!
It has an air of Americana in that New York is its most iconic city and this article is drenched in 'look how good we used to make things', and then it delightfully leads us back to old blighty for the Anglophiles.
For an article romantic about a font, it's perfection. Catnip for nerds.
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.
(the site seems to eagerly load lots of large images, and a 500MB video)
... and I find it distracting by how wrong it is. It should say "Leroy technical lettering set", or even better mention Gorton directly.
Instead, it says: "a Gothic sans-serif script", even if it mentions Leroy a few paragraphs later :)
Normally I hate the pointless use of javascript in basic text and image websites, but lazy image loading would probably stop this server having been hugged to death
Well, that didn't last long; Aptos enters the chat.