100types.com.25centuryoldstyle

intro

how to

sizes

styles

Famous for:
The first typeface designed for a magazine as a house face.

Applications: Newspaper Publishing

Ubiquity:
Very widely used

Category:
20th Century Serif Roman

Stress: Vertical
Serif: Oblique

Date: 1890

Designer:
Linn Boyd Benton

Foundry:
ATF

Location:
Chicago, USA

Current equivalent:
FB Bureau Roman

See also:
Linotype Century Old Style,
Miller and Richard's Old Style, ATF Bookman, New Century Schoolbook

Technologies:
Metal (foundry)
Metal (machine)
Photosetting
Postscript
Opentype

Design history:
Designed for Theodore DeVinne’s ‘Century’ magazine, this type shows the influence of the ‘legibility’ style applied to the oldstyle roman. Linn Boyd Benton was a skilled punch cutter and outstanding inventor, famous for the invention of both self-spacing compositor’s type and the Benton automatic punch cutter, which rapidly increased the number of types in circulation at the end of the 19th century. Some sources suggest that without Benton’s invention, Linotype machine setting would have been impossible. Linn Boyd’s son, Morris Fuller Benton, continued his work at ATF, creating a further eighteen variants of the Century typeface between 1900 and 1928, the original having only been made in two weights with an italic.

profile 25

picture: ATF Catalogue