when were the lowercase Highway Gothic alphabets developed?

[agentsteel53]

I know Series E was 1950 (California), but I've heard the rest waited until 2002 for federal adoption - is this correct?

I know I've seen signs that are a lot older, that were done in mixed case, and they all look very similar, so I'm wondering if one state pioneered it and others copied it even before it was made a federal standard.

[roadfro]

It seems highly unlikely that FHWA would have waited until 2002 to adopt the lower case type faces.  Then again, other than guide signs, there haven't been many (if any) standard signs that have consistently used mixed case lettering in anything other than Series E/E(M)...

Interesting question.

[agentsteel53]

It seems highly unlikely that FHWA would have waited until 2002 to adopt the lower case type faces.  Then again, other than guide signs, there haven't been many (if any) standard signs that have consistently used mixed case lettering in anything other than Series E/E(M)...

Interesting question.

Florida and Washington both used C lowercase on green signs and their typefaces are subtly different.

[J N Winkler]

I know Series E was 1950 (California), but I've heard the rest waited until 2002 for federal adoption - is this correct?

The technical option to use them on signs other than freeway/expressway guide signs was introduced in the 2003 MUTCD, but the alphabets themselves were not released by FHWA until 2004 (as part of the current edition of Standard Highway Signs).

BTW, the lowercase alphabet California developed in 1950 (called just "Lowercase" for many years because it was the only lowercase alphabet approved by FHWA and therefore federally authorized for use on traffic signs) is complementary to FHWA Series E Modified (which was, for many years, just an uppercase-only alphabet).

I know I've seen signs that are a lot older, that were done in mixed case, and they all look very similar, so I'm wondering if one state pioneered it and others copied it even before it was made a federal standard.

Georgia DOT has been using mixed-case Series D since the 1990's, and I think WisDOT has been using mixed-case Series D and possibly Series C for at least as long, but I don't think the mixed-case alphabets were necessarily developed by a state DOT.  They could have been developed outside government, e.g. by a vendor of traffic equipment (in much the same way "Series D Modified" was basically an AGA product which was never explicitly approved by FHWA).  In general I tend to think mixed-case traffic sign alphabets other than the combination of Series E Modified/Lowercase have been used on city street name signs the longest.  Wichita, for example, has been using mixed-case Series C, Series D, and even Series E on street name signs since at least the 1970's.

It seems highly unlikely that FHWA would have waited until 2002 to adopt the lower case type faces.  Then again, other than guide signs, there haven't been many (if any) standard signs that have consistently used mixed case lettering in anything other than Series E/E(M)...

FHWA did wait that long.  Until 2002, all of the FHWA alphabet series (including Series E Modified) were uppercase-only.  There was just one lowercase-only alphabet, called Lowercase, which complemented Series E Modified only.  We call the combined typeface (old Series E Modified plus old Lowercase) "Series E Modified" now because that is less of a mouthful than "Series E Modified plus Lowercase," and it is an accurate description now that the FHWA Series 2000 alphabets (which were introduced in 2004) are fully mixed-case.

My recollection is that during the rulemaking process for the 2003 MUTCD, which unfolded in (if memory serves) 2002, FHWA proposed that agencies be allowed to use mixed-case legend on conventional-road guide signs.  I disagreed with this proposal, saying that there were already examples of state DOTs using mixed-case legend other than the Series E Modified/Lowercase combination on guide signs.  I said that the legibility situation was already critical for conventional-road guide signs (in many states, conventional roads have speed limits comparable to freeways but are specified to have uppercase lettering only 6" high, as opposed to mixed-case legend on freeway guide signs which has 12" lowercase loop height/16" caps), and suggested that states should be prevented from putting up signs of substandard legibility by requiring them to use Series E Modified/Lowercase as the uppercase/lowercase combination on conventional-road guide signs.  (At this time I did not know that it was FHWA's intention to promulgate officially approved mixed-case versions of the standard alphabets other than Series E Modified, and was relying on the fact that WisDOT and GDOT had been allowed to use mixed-case alphabets other than Series E Modified/Lowercase without apparent FHWA sanction.)  FHWA declined to restrict usage of mixed-case legends as I had suggested, saying that it had sufficient confidence that exercise of engineering judgment within state DOTs would make such a provision unnecessary.

I believe the 2009 MUTCD has now removed the option to use uppercase-only primary legend on conventional-road guide signs altogether (FHWA certainly pitched a proposal to that effect in the NPRM).  I felt a bit pressed for time when I was putting together my comments for this rulemaking process, so I focused exclusively on diagrammatics, and did not comment on this particular change.  I neither supported nor opposed it because the policy change I wanted--a minimum legibility criterion based primarily on travel speed, taking into account both alphabet series and either uppercase letter height (in the case of uppercase-only legend) or lowercase loop height (in the case of mixed-case legend)--was not on the table.  How much of a retrograde step this change represents depends on the alphabet series state DOTs choose, and also whether they try to use the new criterion as an excuse to try to reduce sign panel area.

[agentsteel53]

thanks for all the info!

(in much the same way "Series D Modified" was basically an AGA product which was never explicitly approved by FHWA)

I am in disagreement with this minor note, in that I have seen official California signs with BM, CM, and DM fonts as early as 1948.  I believe that the BM-DM (and likely EM, and even maybe AM and FM, of which I have never seen examples) set was designed by 1948, and the EM was chosen in 1950 to be the mixed-case font to be used on guide signs going forward.



there is an example of a DM number "6", on a 1948 sign - I have seen enough examples of this sort of shield to be quite confident that it was a Cal Div Hwys standard in 1948-1949.  

[J N Winkler]

I am in disagreement with this minor note, in that I have seen official California signs with BM, CM, and DM fonts as early as 1948.  I believe that the BM-DM (and likely EM, and even maybe AM and FM, of which I have never seen examples) set was designed by 1948, and the EM was chosen in 1950 to be the mixed-case font to be used on guide signs going forward.

Thanks for setting me straight--I had forgotten that the distinction between the Caltrans series and the FHWA series would have had to be in place by 1950 at the latest.  AGA may have gotten the glyphs from California, but I believe it was instrumental in promoting D Modified among button-copy-using states, which typically specified it for all-uppercase legend on freeway guide signs.  Essentially all the freeway guide sign legend for which FHWA later specified all-uppercase Series E (not Series D or E Modified) was done in Series D Modified in these states--including cardinal direction words, word "EXIT" in tabs, exit number in tabs, distance legends on main sign panel, etc.

BTW, whose idea was it to use "cupped 5" as a substitute for the correct "5" in Series E Modified?  Compare Page Studio Graphics' Highway Gothic EM with the real deal.  "Cupped 5" has never appeared in any official FHWA publication that I know of--the present "5" goes all the way back to 1945.

[agentsteel53]

BTW, whose idea was it to use "cupped 5" as a substitute for the correct "5" in Series E Modified?  Compare Page Studio Graphics' Highway Gothic EM with the real deal.  "Cupped 5" has never appeared in any official FHWA publication that I know of--the present "5" goes all the way back to 1945.

can you give graphical depictions of "cupped" vs "regular" 5 please?

Michael Summa and I had a discussion about this a few months ago, regarding the button copy DM numbers used on shields.  There were two major makers of button copy in play in the 60s: AGA (Stimsonite) and Stratolite, and for smaller size numbers, AGA was more accurate, and for larger ones, Stratolite.  (The threshold was somewhere around 10".) *



here is a shield with some non-standard 6" AGA numbers.  (In fact, the word INTERSTATE appears to be using Nevada's Series E font as well.)  I will have to dig up an example of non-standard Stratolites.

* I may have this exactly backwards.  It may be Stimsonite that was accurate in the larger sizes, as opposed to the smaller.

[J N Winkler]

The "5" in "405" is a good example of "cupped 5."  Another is here:

http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/pixymbols/highway-gothic/

You might need to choose a test text which has numbers in order to get "5" to display.  But it is unmistakably not FHWA "5."