The Fournier, Didot and American point scales, with inch and metric measure.
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MM
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1 1
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20
30
40
1,6 1
3
3
4
5
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16 24
30
36
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vigorously conducted by John Marder, which did a large busi¬
ness in the western states. In 1871 the foundry was destroyed in
the great Chicago fire. Marder immediately raised funds to
rebuild and replace matrices and machinery. He saw an oppor¬
tunity to put into practice a suggestion which had been made to
him by Nelson Hawks, a Milwaukee printer. Hawks, who may
well have known the Fournier and Didot systems, proposed that
the pica should be divided into twelve parts, to be called 'points',
and that each body size should be a definite number of points, so
that regularity between sizes could be achieved. In 1872 the
Marder, Luse foundry resumed business, and in the next few
years made much in their advertising of what they called their
'American System of Interchangeable Bodies'. A few other
foundries adopted the Chicago system, but some objected to it on
the ground that the Marder, Luse pica was different from the pica
most commonly used. This objection was sustained. On 17
September 1886 the twenty-four member companies in the
United States Type Founders Association formally adopted the
point system as standard, but selected as the basis of it not the
Chicago foundry's pica but the pica of the Mackellar, Smith ÔC
Jordan foundry of Philadelphia - the largest and oldest foundry
in the United States. A minority of members considered the new
standard to have been 'capriciously and unscientifically selected,
not based on any regular fraction of the foot or metre'. To coun¬
ter that the Mackellar foundry claimed that eighty-three of their
picas measured exactly thirty-five centimetres - an equation of
very limited utility. The outcome, then, was a 12 point pica em
measuring .1660 inch (4.21 mm), and a typographic point of
.0138 inch (.35 mm).
In the United States the system was adopted fairly rapidly. No
doubt the process of change from the old to the new was stimu-
AMERICAN
BRITISH
DIDOT
Points
inches
mm
Points
inches
mm
I
■01383
•35
I
•01483
.38
2
■02.77
•70
2
•0296
■75
3
• 0415
1-05
3
.0445
i-13
4
■°553
1-40
4
•0593
I-5I
4І
•0657
1.67
л3
44
•0704
1.79
5
•0692
1.76
5
•0742
1-88
5Í
■0761
1.93
Sì
■0816
2-07
6
•0830
2-II
6
•0890
2-26
6|
•0899
2-28
6|
•0964
2.45
7
•0968
2-46
7
•1038
2-64
7Ì
•1037
2-63
lì
■1112
2-82
8
■1107
2-8l
8
•1186
3-OI
9
•1245
3-16
9
•1335
3-39
10
•1383
3-51
io
.1483
3-77
11
■1522
3-87
11
•1631
4-14
12
•1660
4-22
12
■1780
4-52
14
•1936
4-92
14
•2076
5-2-7
16
•2213
5-62
16
•2-373
6-03
18
•2490
6.32
18
•2669
6-78
20
•2.767
7-03
20
•2966
7-53
24
•ЗЗ2.0
8.43
2-4
•3559
9.04
ЗО
•4150
10.54
30
•4449
11-30
36
•4980
12-65
36
•5339
13-56
42-
•5810
14.76
42
•6229
15-82
48
•6640
16-87 1
48
•7118
i8-o8
lated by the formation, in 1892, of the American Type Founders
Company, which took over twenty-three foundries whose output
amounted to eighty-five per cent of the total for the country. In
Britain the full acceptance of the point system was delayed for
some years because of acrimonious disagreement between some
of the founders; but the American point system had become
pretty general in the English-speaking world by about 1905 -
though a catalogue issued by Stephenson Blake in 1919 had to say
that the system 'cannot be said to have as yet secured such full
adoption in this country as in America'. Even in 1930, in the firm I
joined as an apprentice compositor, we had to be careful not to
use ro point spaces with long primer type, or 8 point with brevier.
There are, then, two typographic measurement systems in use:
the American point system in the English-speaking world, and
the Didot system in continental Europe and wherever French
commercial influence was strong in the nineteenth century.
Fifteen lines of American 12 point type will fit the depth of 14
lines of Didot 12 point. The American system is so nearly com¬
patible with inch measure - thirty picas is only two hundredths of