The hero of our story is an upright, Roman soldier named Poliphilus. Sadly, his first marriage ended in tragedy; his wife lost without trace. Alas, with no companion to share his life, he was a very lonely figure, indeed.  Time (and Roman legions) march on, of course, and a new partner appeared on the scene: the pretty-faced Blado. The two would find greater expression together, than either one alone. Do you know these two characters? A new army of people, via computers and the dictatorial-sounding, “word processing programs”,  now have access to, what was once, the esoteric province of graphic designers, typographers and printers.  You may have guessed that I am talking about type styles; some, like Poliphilus and its italic version, Blado, have curious names.  To explain the story I began with, Poliphilus is in fact a typeface of roman style. Its original italic was abandoned when the Monotype Corporation (an English type-founder) re-cut a new italic version. Blado was the result of the re-design, which Monotype considered a more suitable match. 

I imagine poor Poliphilus pining occasionally for his previous (but equally, once printed, right-leaning) love.

The names of fonts or typefaces are myriad (actually Myriad is the name of one). Many names commemorate the early type designers (Baskerville and Cochin are examples) It seems a pity that you would choose Modern 20 or Sans 7 when naming your font, when Braggadocio, Albertina or Scherzo exist as inspiring examples. Recent ones such as Raincheck and Laserbeam are better!  Each to their own, I guess.

To make type you need a letter cutter. He was the obsessive craftsman who could engrave a master typeface, letter by letter, on the ends of small pieces of steel. The smallest type cut was about an eighth of an inch (4pt) and the largest about an inch (72pt).  Boxwood was chosen for even larger letters. When it came to immortality, letter cutters fared less well than the designers; many craftsmen may well have become blind from such exacting work. 

Everyone sits together at the family table, whether you are big or little. It’s the same with type, since every size of inked letter has to hit the paper at the same time.  Frustratingly, those heights varied with the whim of each foundry.  At some point (I hope you are getting these puns) it was decided that some standard was required.  “Good idea”, everyone said. Now I suggest that if you want to determine a common standard, the best way is not to divide 35 by 83. But such was the wisdom in those days, and, with a few other calculations, the letterpress printers and founders arrived at metal type with a height of 0.918 inches. Bravo, everyone cheered, a Standard had been achieved. (At 23.33, the measurement doesn’t even translate, sensibly into millimeters.)

Currently we have a practical, but dull, number system (6pt 12pt 48pt etc). When type was made of something physical, the font sizes had evocative names such as minikin, pica, excelsior, paragon or brevier. Sadly, the reasons for the names have faded from memory, along with the names of paper sizes such as “crown” and “atlas”.  (My favorite is “double elephant.” What an image!) “Foolscap” survives, though.  Gone the same way is terminology like “make-ready” which means adjusting the height of worn type with tiny pieces of paper.

Think of the writings of Benjamin Franklin, and you’ll realize what romantic types printers were. As you all learn in school, inky-fingered Mr. Franklin started his working life as a printer, and was later able to indulge in politics on the proceeds. And I further my case (more puns!) by telling you that the little ornaments, which once decorated the pages of books and publications, are known as “printers’ flowers.” The imaginative printer would adorn his work with a bouquet picked from the “garden” growing in his case of type.

When setting type, the compositor would place the tray or type case of small letters at the bottom of his sloping bench with the capitals positioned above - upper case and lower case!  An apprentice’s task was to disassemble, and redistribute the used type back into the relevant cases. That was known as “dissing”. Many print shops used to line the banks of the Thames river in London, England, and, so the story goes, lazy apprentices, instead of “dissing”, would tip the type in the Thames. (Don’t drink the water!)

Today, newly emancipated by the genius of the computer, is the lucky typographer who once had to count every word in a manuscript before deciding which font, in which size, best fit the space available; a tedious, but necessary process.  But made redundant by the same technology, is the poor compositor. He was the mechanic who placed every letter, one by one into a composing stick before transferring the backwards and upside down words into metal frames or “formes”. That profession is now lost to history, along with intricate beds of letters, heavy cases of type, and lead poisoning.  Those that could, cheered!

Type founders are now computer-aided designers with marketing departments — a long way from those who supplied the descendants of the early printers, Gutenberg, Caxton and, the aptly but improbably, named, Winken de Worde.

The computer has liberated type from its physical body of an alloy of lead, antimony and tin.  Lines of letters can now run outside their prisons.  Words can bend and stretch without the straight jacket.  They can overlap and fraternize.  Letters can be made to soar and sizes changed at will. Designers can at last make type run and jump in the sun!  Every letter of even the longest word can be a different size or typestyle, although I wouldn’t recommend it.

So, when you go to the default setting of 12pt Times New Roman, be grateful, and consider the sweat (and swearing) that used to be involved in getting those 26 metal soldiers to line up and march in step.

We all have to tolerate a kind of messy “cultural evolution”, which sometimes produces less than ideal results. Without being presented with possible alternatives, we end up with "the way the world is"! This collection of examples, which might be termed “interfaces”, occasionally presents some alternatives to consider: the way the world could be! The following is a ramble through a selection that I have tripped over, or bumped into, along my ever- winding road.

Over many years, like some lunatic who picks up old bus tickets, or who pockets used cigarette packs, I have been collecting cultural oddities that I feel could do with some improvement. As they sporadically appear, I stow them in a big fat file: “The Insanity File”! As you tramp the road with me, you will get a better idea of what I mean by these “interfaces”. When considering how they are used, I have in mind, the average user: ME! I am not thinking of the expert, who may well have spent even more years, (than this compendium took to assemble), lessening the interference the various interfaces cause, between what we wish to achieve, and how to accomplish it.

I’ll start with language, which is a mental interface. It is the device or method I use to express my thoughts, and the filter by which I understand your thoughts. We can all cite some ridiculous examples of language, but to give a mundane one: why don’t all plurals in English work just by adding an ‘s’ to the singular form?  Studying the history of a language (its etymology) will provide answers.  And how about how words are spelled?  Same answer!

Bernard Shaw’s assertion that “if we don’t spell the way we speak, we will soon be speaking the way we spell” may eventually come true. I think that he may have forgotten the role accents play in determining speech, since the same spelling can and is, sounded in different ways, leading to more confusion. In British English, B-U-O-Y is pronounced BOY, not BOOEE. Bernard Shaw was able to demonstrate that the word, FISH, could be spelled as G-H-O-T-I… ‘GH’ from ‘rouGH’, ‘O’ from ‘wOmen’, and ‘TI’ from ‘staTIon’.   What fun there is to be had at the expense of these idiosyncrasies!

Jumping from the mental to the physical, here’s a different interface. The spade that Irishman, Bernard Shaw, might have used when digging his potatoes, is a very practical object. It has a heart-shaped, pointed metal blade, and a long wooden handle that tapers outwards towards the top.  The sharp point penetrates the soil easily, just as any wedge-shaped object does.  The widening of the handle prevents sweaty hands from sliding off the end.  An English spade, on the other hand (or is that in the other hand) has a square-ended blade.  It has a triangular termination for one hand on the end of a short wooden handle. It is not much use for digging, and is more like a gentleman’s toy in comparison. It comes into its own when leaned on in order to discuss the weather. This implement stands up nicely against a shed wall, which is where it should remain.  The English spade is, in appearance, a well-developed, refined tool, but is nothing, in actual use, compared with its Irish rival.

A writer may or may not need a spade, but if a pen is not mighty enough, they might choose a typewriter as their weapon. The typewriter or computer keyboard is a prime example of an interface urgently needing reform.  You would have thought that the common word ‘THE’ would be quicker to type than the less common ‘TOP’.  It isn’t, and the reason for the problem is historic.  Typists could type faster than the primitive mechanism of the time would allow.  The keyboard layout was devised to slow them down.  With the advent of the electronic keyboard you would think that all that expediency could be behind us.  It is like trying to swim with rocks strapped to your legs, but the manufacturers and we, press and press and press blindly on.  There is a solution to this problem.  My ‘Insanity File’ has a page or two on the Dvorak keyboard, which has far more logical layout.  Commonly used letters are grouped under the index fingers, the less common under the middle finger and so on to the least adept pinky.  Surprisingly, most computers actually have the Dvorak layout built into the operating system. Maybe the keyboard manufacturers never noticed!

This leads me on to piano keyboards.  What a ridiculous set up!  Popular composer, Irving Berlin’s talent was in composing, not playing. Since he could only reliably play in the key of “F sharp” (using just the black notes) Mr. Berlin needed a specially adapted keyboard, which would transpose from that key to any other. He could have chosen to play in the key of “C” all the time, by just hitting the white keys. If not in “C”, he would have been all at sea! And why wasn’t “A” chosen to sit so well on the white notes, instead of the third letter in the alphabet? (Not that the letter names really matter!) Perhaps you can tell me.

There is a clever example of a piano keyboard that does allow one to play easily, in any key.  Learn the layout for playing in C major, and, as if by magic, by shifting just your starting position, all the correct notes fall under your fingers in the same way for playing in C, D, A flat or whatever.  That keyboard is known as the Von Janko.  It has other, almost inadvertent, properties that elaborate the possibilities of the piano.  It is a total rethink, rather than a mere adaptation. Brilliant!  It is used in a modified form on continental chromatic accordion keyboards.  Sadly, It seems that pianists have spent far too many hours practicing the difficult keys and developing their finger skills over years in unbelievably ways, to change to the Von Janko.  We are impressed by their displays of dexterity, but could impress ourselves with our untapped talent, if we had access to such a keyboard. There is an old example of this keyboard at songwriter Stephen Foster’s old home.

After letters, numbers are yet another instance.  Speakers of Cantonese are able to manipulate 9 digits in their heads.  The best the average Westerner can do is 7.  Maybe that’s why there are so many Chinese!  Their astounding ability is due to the logic of their number system.   Number words are short and work sensibly together.  They don’t have the anomalous 11, 12, 13 to 19 that we have or the ridiculous ‘four twenties, ten, eight’ that the French have for 98. Amusing perhaps, but inconvenient in the extreme. It wouldn’t take much to jettison these aberrations.  The world didn’t end when the European Union countries changed their currencies to the Euro.  Britain’s quaint 12 pennies to a shilling and 20 shillings to a pound system was lost, eventually, to the beautifully simple system of counting in 10s.  I could talk about measuring in the even older chains, perches and scruples, but will spare your poor ears!

The world also didn’t end when the calendar we use today, was corrected in September 1752, and everyone thought they’d lost 11 days from their lives!  As far as logic goes, 360 degrees in a circle is just silly! And so is 60 seconds in a minute, 24 hours in a day, or 7 days in a week.

And do you realize that, with inches and feet, you have to remember 3 numbers for every dimension, (think of 13 and 11/16ths) instead of just one number when using millimeters. Try carrying more than 3 of those numbers along with your plank of wood, on the journey from measuring to electric saw. These things can be changed if the will is there in sufficient numbers; we just need a slight cultural shift, or a critical mass to make it happen.  What is really needed in all these examples is the cultural equivalent of the enzyme used to snip out pieces of DNA in the lab, in order to manipulate its sequence.  Get rid of the gene “for” “Dunderhead” and replace it with the one for “Genius”! If only!

A chair may be a beautiful piece of visual design, but your rear end can tell just how comfortable it is far better than your eyes.  If you always had to walk 10 miles to get to your breakfast, or swim across the river to get home every evening, you might quickly harness a horse or invent the bridge.  Fix these interfaces, and a whole herd of horses will be able to gallop over the mental arch of that elegant, golden span!

Our over-exerted brains, sore eyes, tired hands, and slack mouths will thank you, once these annoying, officious gate-keepers become truly invisible servants. 

Although I do enjoy these quirks of history it is time for me to close the folder and let some sanity reign (spelled ‘REIGN’).