Book cover: type specimen book for the Monotype
Book of specimens for a new typographic technology: Schrift-Proben der Monotype Setzmaschine (Type Specimens for the Monotype Typesetting Machine), published by Breitkopf & Härtel, Leipzig, undated
Deutsches Buch- und Schriftmuseum der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Leipzig

Script

The A-Z of industrialisation

You will observe, Watson, the alternative use of the long s and the short. It is one of several indications which enabled me to fix the date.

Arthur Conan Doyle, The Hound of the Baskervilles, 1901/1902

Script is used to record, save and copy written information which can be passed on to and decoded by others. Having a command of writing is the basis for education, business (Businesses), trade and science. By using technology, significant parts of paperwork involving writing texts can be mechanised (typewriter, typecasting machine, typesetting machine). Methods for conveying information (Networks) require that the text be encoded a second time.

Script design also kept pace with technical developments: with the emergence of the typecasting machine and the typesetting machine brought came new books containing sample scripts which were kept available by book printers for customers and for their own use. The type specimens contained in such books showed what the available type designs looked like.