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Atari keyboard font


jamm

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I don't suppose anyone happens to know the name of the typeface used on the Atari 8bit keyboards?  The same font is used from the 800 through to the XL line (and then changed with the XE).  It seems to have been a popular font for computer keyboards in the 70's -- at least with Digital Equipment Corporation.  The famous DEC VT50 terminals from earlier in the 70's used the same font (see attached).  Older and newer DEC terminals used the same keyboard font.

 

DEC VT50 (1974):

NormalVT50-KB.jpg

 

Some identifying characteristics of the font:

  • It's sans serif
  • Q: tail crosses circle and is curvy
  • $: the vertical line does not cross the S shape
  • M: outside lines are parallel and the vertex goes down to the baseline
  • G: has no tail, and right vertical line is partially flattened
  • K: diagonals make a T
  • C is nearly closed
  • 1 (one) and I (capital letter 'eye') are completely undecorated vertical lines
  • " (double-quotes) are straight

 

DEC VT05 (1970):

VT05.jpg

Edited by jamm
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There was a fair bit of DEC influence at Atari, and weren't their minis used in development as well?

Even the ST keyboard was openly said to have been inspired by the VT terminals.

 

I get the feeling it was a popular choice - I used to use a Raytheon terminal at work in the mid 1980s.  Couldn't find a picture of the keyboard though this one isn't far off it.

 

857333038_o.jpg

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4 hours ago, Sugarland said:

Yes Hi-Tech made the Dragon32 keyboard too. (I edited my post after jamm made his) The dragon was very obscure UK only machine I believe.

Not all that obscure when you consider it was basically a TRS-80 coco.  Dragon was bought by a Spanish company, so any Spaniards from the 80s would probably be familiar with it too.

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3 hours ago, Rybags said:

857333038_o.jpg

That one's extremely close, too.  The only obvious difference is the '1'.

 

One thing I'm noticing is that there are a good number of keyboards from that era that use very nearly the same keyboard font, with maybe one or two differences.  It's possible the company making the keycaps was the same across the board (creating the tooling to fabricate those keys is not cheap), or there was a lot of cross-influence from some early designs.

 

Still haven't found a typeface online that's right, or even "close enough", yet, though...

 

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12 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Several different fonts were used on the 800XL and 600XL keyboard, depending on manufacturer. There’s a long thread about the XL keyboards that you can easily search for.

I've noticed the typeface on the 800XL/600XL is slightly different depending on who made the keyboard.

I did find the thread(s) on the different XL keyboards, but I don't remember seeing any mention of a specific font. Did I miss it?

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The early Apple PC's used a very similar font.  These were made by Datagenics according to this:

http://www.willegal.net/appleii/appleii-first_page.htm

 

Apple I recommended keyboard

Apple 1 Recommended Datanetics Rev B 1976.jpg

 

Apple II keyboard

Apple 2 Datagenics.jpg

 

It's not clear if the 'Q' has a curly tail on it or not. The '1' is not plain.  The 'C' is a bit more open and the top and bottom of the 'B' look a little more lopsided than they do on the Atari.

 

Oddly, the Apple II j-Plus is actually closer to the Atari version in terms of the 'C', 'B', and 'Q'.

apple-ii-plus_1_9d0c62665e78fe26b67c3ad76e739a45.jpg

 

 

As a counterpoint, these machines from the same era definitely used different keyboard fonts:

TRS-80 Model I

TRS-80 Model II (much closer, but still different)

TRS-80 Color Computer

Commodore PET

Commodore 64

IBM PC 5150

 

 

The TI 99/4A looks to use the same typeface.  I can't put my finger on why it looks different, though.  It might be slightly taller, or maybe it's simpler larger on these keycaps.

ti99-4a.jpg

Edited by jamm
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6 minutes ago, jamm said:

... but I don't remember seeing any mention of a specific font. Did I miss it?

The thread on XL keyboard variants mentions the difference in glyph shapes for several letters. There is no mention of a specific font because (I believe) there was no single, standardized font used or defined. In the 70’s and 80’s many things were hand-drawn by graphic artists and designers. The various keyboard manufacturers were likely using generic commercial glyph templates for the key painting or shot-molds (I don’t recall if XL keyboards are painted or double-shot with two colors of plastic). They used the closest thing could find or had on-hand that matched the (likely hand-drawn) Atari design files. 

 

Issues like this are why it’s so difficult to design modern replacement labels and art for current-generation stuff that matches perfectly - today we all used standardized, well-defined computer-based fonts and point sizes. Decades ago it was all hand-drawn art on drawing board, including lettering. 

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13 minutes ago, DrVenkman said:

Issues like this are why it’s so difficult to design modern replacement labels and art for current-generation stuff that matches perfectly - today we all used standardized, well-defined computer-based fonts and point sizes. Decades ago it was all hand-drawn art on drawing board, including lettering. 

Definitely!  I've little hope of finding a single typeface that's exactly right.  I'm just trying to find a font online that is 'mostly' right.  Seems surprising that something close has been hard to find given how prevalent and influential it was for so long.

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I've found ton of very similar fonts used for keyboards going back at least to the 1950's, and you'll notice that even most current keyboards use very similar fonts.

 

It seems the common ancestor to all these is the font created by the George Gorton Machine Company in Racine, WI, USA. 

http://luc.devroye.org/fonts-80708.html

 

Note the lettering on the right wheel:

page01_screen.jpg

 

 

 

page04_large.jpg

 

It's not clear when the typeface was created, but it goes back to at least 1934.

 

A couple digital recreations of the Gorton font are here:

https://github.com/drdnar/GortonDigital/

https://web.archive.org/web/20170908215110/http://deutscheschrift.info/en/Gorton.html

 

31800710-bbb1ceb0-b510-11e7-8132-c7e9d5679c83.png

 

And, of course, a discussion of this font as it relates to old Honeywell terminals on DeskAuthority:

https://deskthority.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=8370

 

meta5ute.jpg

Edited by jamm
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On 2/24/2020 at 4:34 AM, Sugarland said:

From a current Dragon32 ebay listing going for a reasonable price, too. The HI-TEK.

 

Dragon32 keyboard.jpg

I've been looking at Dragons , wondering if their keyboard could be robbed and used on an 800.

I could really use a new keyboard 

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5 minutes ago, mimo said:

I've been looking at Dragons , wondering if their keyboard could be robbed and used on an 800.

I could really use a new keyboard 

Yes good question. Looks like it could work in theory but would be a time consuming and technical project and not all keys are there. It wouldn't look pretty.

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I remember seeing an article for a DIY keyboard, probably for the 400, might have been a local Aus magazine.

They just used some industry "standard" thing, similar to what you'd see on some of those homebrew CP/M things of the late 1970s.

From memory it just hooked straight up so the row/column arrangement must have been same as ours.

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  • 1 year later...

Not sure if anyone is still interested but I found a font that is nearly identical to what you're looking for. It's called Routed Gothic. Some guy at webonastick bought an old Leroy Lettering kit and traced them in inkscape to replicate the font found on old aviation blueprints. The little curly bit on the Q could stand to be a tiny bity more horizontal and the zero doesn't have the slash through it but I found that it looks good on a keycap but not good when reading it on screen.

 

I loved my old TI 99/4a and loved the lettering on the keys (also the *thonk* of those thick keycaps being pressed). I had no idea until I saw this thread that there were other keyboards with the same lettering as the 99/4a and there were others looking for the same font so I signed up on this site just to add this. :)

routed gothic.png

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  • 8 months later...

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