> 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 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.
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)
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.
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
More like "The hardest website your browser will work on" ... will come back once it loads
600 images in the page takes time to load.
> 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 thought it was 40K reference at first about certainty of steel
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.
What could they mean?
As a non-American, I don’t even understand today what that means. (And the website linked to isn’t loading, so I don’t have the context from that.)
License plates vary between countries but this description should be recognisable to most of the world.
We use "AA AA 1234" or variations of that, so the examples did not register as license plates at all. Interesting.
Regardless of the content, what other 50x11cm mass produced metal signs are there? I was thinking street name signs, before reading the examples.
I believe those are car license plate numbers.
British ones of various vintage, with RFS 131Y the oldest of those, from 1983.
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?
Could be. And they're high quality images and movie clips.
It is definitely a "Macbook Pro on a wooden table at a coffee shop, owner with tattoos and stylish facial hair" kind of website
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.
On Fennec on Android, no images appear to load at all. Edit: they do, it just takes ages. Could be the slow connection.
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.
It's a pretty font and gives that instant retro look on keyboards for example.
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.
The author is selling "Gorton Perfected" for $20: https://shifthappens.site/store/
List of digitized versions: https://webonastick.com/fonts/routed-gothic/
Nice one, thanks!
I'm using National Park Typeface for my site and I kinda like it
Some past comments, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43053419
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)
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.
https://archive.ph/mYRQX
(the site seems to eagerly load lots of large images, and a 500MB video)
And on the pedestal these words appear (in Gorton):
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains.
Cool to flip through their master copy typeface reference: https://archive.org/details/gorton-master-copy-type-for-all-...
Very few of the images are loading for me.
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
It's funny reading an article about kerning mistakes in font usage while the author doesn't even bother to implement lazy loading of images.
> Of course you will see it, the same way you saw a lot of Arial in the 1990s, or Calibri today.
Well, that didn't last long; Aptos enters the chat.