Looking for application on “commercial/vertical/single-line/mechanical” Gothic faces

[dstringham]

Looking for any historical praxis background on 1940s–1960s commercial faces like ‘Upright Gothic’; these are engineering or architectural lettering templated faces with any combination of the words ‘vertical’ (or ‘slanted’), ‘single-stroke,’ ‘mechanical,’ ‘single line,’ ‘commercial,’ ‘gothic,’ or ‘capitals’ in the title. I think I have access to early letterers’ books on the subject, but I’m trying to determine if these were actually made into metal/linotype sets used in publishing. (They look very much like Engravers Gothic from Bitstream but there are noticeable differences.)

This sign language dictionary (figure 1) from 1965 appears to use letterforms (the ‘dez’ symbols section at the bottom) from a commercial/single-stroke inspired face and I am trying to determine if the symbols in the 'tab' section (at the top) are also from a similar/the same commercial/single-stroke inspired face. They appear to have similar characteristics although some characters clearly do not. The '‘tab’ and ‘dez’ characters weights are the same, which is what leads me to believe they have some commonality.

Thanks for your thoughts in advance.