Television Signal Analysis
Photo: Grant Hutchinson. License: CC BY-NC.
Title page from Television Signal Analysis, a booklet published by the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (otherwise known as the original AT&T) in 1955. The headline face is a version of Phenix American featuring rather intriguing alternate g and y glyphs.
The 1957 version of this booklet is available from the Internet Archive.
2 Comments on “Television Signal Analysis”
Thank you for your contribution, Grant!
I checked Mac McGrew’s American Metal Typefaces Of The Twentieth Century—a fabulous resource that never ceases to amaze me—and learned that Phenix is a spin-off of News Gothic Extra Condensed, “with several characters redesigned in the ‘round’ fashion of the time.” And indeed the g and y appear to be taken from News Gothic Extra Condensed. You could just as well say that this is News Gothic XC with the E, A and N taken from Phenix. In today’s OpenType format, Phenix would probably be packaged as a stylistic “Art Deco” set of News Gothic.
Thanks for the additional background, Florian. I was familiar with News Gothic Condensed, but had no idea it was so similar to Phenix.