DEC Logo

[Paul Koning]

> On Jun 29, 2015, at 11:26 AM, Toby Thain <toby at telegraphics.com.au> wrote:
> 
> On 2015-06-29 10:59 AM, Paul Koning wrote:
>> 
>>> On Jun 28, 2015, at 6:34 PM, simon <simski at dds.nl> wrote:
>>> 
>>> It seems to me that pdp8 is written in futura bold
>> 
>> Where? In the picture that Bill posted, you can see what I think is
>> a
> dec custom font in labels like “industrial 11” and “power supply".
> That’s the same font that was used on the covers of pdp-11 handbooks,
> and as far as I know it’s something DEC made up. I traced it and turned
> it into a TrueType font some years ago. Here it is. Some of the letters
> are guesses because I have no samples.
> 
> There's reason to believe it's "Chalet". See my previous mail for a link to one revival of that family.

I looked at that.  There are plenty of variations, but none of them match at all.  Take a look at the 11/45 processor handbook, or the peripherals handbook (for example the 1976 edition).  The inside cover page is particularly helpful because it shows the company name for an additional bunch of characters.

If you mix & match letters from all the different variants of Chalet (like the a from Paris 1980 but the k from Paris 1970) you can get closer.  But that’s not plausible, and in any case it’s still not the same.  The k in Paris 1970 is somewhat like the one in the DEC font, but it is clearly not a match: the DEC k has arcs starting at the vertical line, while in Paris 1970 there’s a bit of a horizontal line first.  And none of the variants have the r in “processor” or either of the two version of the t in “digital equipment corporation”.

	paul