The oldest font, still alive?

[Member dbe…]

>1989?
That's right. I was a walking talking pre- even then.

>If we’re limited to purely computer type, you might not be lying :)
Well, date of creation and creation date, alive and font have all have to be defined. ;)

Cheers!

[Member Cri…]

Michiel:

Since your first answers were Antiqua and Garamond, I assume you are looking for a digital revival. If that is true, then DanGayle is right: you can find revivals of the font used by Gutenberg, so that is the oldest you can find today (assuming it is really the oldest font, at least in the Western World).

Two digital interpretations of that design:

1456 Gutenberg Bold
FF JohannesG & Exp

[Member Tho…]

Dave Berlow: Adobe *still* sells Type 1 fonts, which have not had any OpenType-related updates. There are a few whose Mac versions have not been revised since as late as 1987-89. But I'm with those who think that interpretation of the question is kinda goofy. :)

Cheers,

T

[Member dbe…]

>Dave Berlow: Adobe *still* sells Type 1 fonts, which have not had any OpenType-related updates.
How 'bout Euros!?

Cheers!

[Member Tho…]

@DB: Back around 1998-1999, Adobe added euros to only those type families that had family members bundled in PostScript printers. Other families in the Adobe Type Library only got euros added as part of their conversion to OpenType, an effort which had started around the same time. So that affected maybe 1/4 of the Adobe Type Library, as a rough swag.

There might even be Adobe Type 1 fonts that were last rebuilt as long ago as 1985 or '86, but I couldn't swear to that. Certainly 1987 or thereabouts, though.

Regards,

T

[Member pau…]

Bembo is the oldest one I could find (from 1496).

???

Bembo is not that old! This reading of the Wikipedia article is misleading regarding the age of the typeface. Bembo (1927) is not the same typeface as the source of its inspiration, the De Aetna typeface (~1495). I hope that you are more thorough in the rest of your research.

[Member Dan…]

@David and Thomas
This is great! We always talk about documenting past history, but it always happens that no one documents recent history. If those old guys had bothered to document their sources, their achievements, etc., we wouldn't even need to have discussions like this.

In 200 years, what will the people doing research on Postscript fonts ca. 1986-89 find as their results? (By my own accounting, Black
Chancery has conclusively been proven to be the first/most important typeface of the era. —Dan Gayle IV, Type Historian)