Rare Type Specimens at the Open Library

Collecting rare specimen books from type foundries can be a really expensive hobby. Luckily there is a growing number of digitized type specimen books available online. The Open Library project offers a free and enjoyable way to browse in those books. The magnifying glass isn’t working yet, but you can download most of these type specimen as PDFs with a sufficient resolution. Here is a selection of the available type specimen books:

William Caslon – A specimen of printing types (1785)

Franklin type foundry, Cincinnati – Convenient book of specimens (1889)

Barnhart bros. & Spindler, Chicago – Book of type specimens (1881)

Keystone Type Foundry, Philadelphia – Abridged specimen book (1906)

Cleveland Type Foundry – Catalogue and book of specimens of type faces (1895)

Palmer & Rey, San Francisco – New specimen book (1884)

American Type Founders Company – American specimen book of type styles (1912)

Lanston Monotype Machine Company – The monotype specimen book of type faces (1922)

Inland Type Foundry, St. Louis – Specimen book and catalog (1897)

MacKellar, Smiths & Jordan Co, Philadelphia – Specimens of printing types (1892)

About this entry

You’re currently reading “Rare Type Specimens at the Open Library,” an entry on Ralf Herrmann’s Typography Weblog

Published:: 02.18.08 / 6pm

Category:: English, fonts

Ale Paul

02.18.08 / 7pm

lovely! sad the mackellar pdf is not online, I can not wait to see it with zoom! thanks for the links.

Nick Sherman

This is an amazing resource. The resolution of some of these PDFs is a bit lower than ideal, but they’re great to look at regardless.
I’ve always liked the Internet Archive (the group behind Open Library) for offering public domain horror movies, but never thought to search their database for type specimens.
Thanks for the info.

ralfherrmann

sad the mackellar pdf is not online

It is! They just used the wrong URL. This should work.

Nick, Ralf, what ones you were able to open pdf?

Remove the »_lt« from the links and they should all work fine.

02.18.08 / 8pm

It might be easier to get them here (different presentation of the same stuff at the Internet Archive site).

paul

02.19.08 / 3am

i just love the MS&J book! great find.

Mark Simonson

02.19.08 / 7am

Neat! Did you notice the bitmap fonts in the back of the Caslon catalog?

(The stern notice saying I should be using IE6+ or Firefox to view the site was kind of silly. It seems to work fine in Safari.)

Beth Budwig

02.20.08 / 11pm

Wow, thank you for linking to these! I am blown away by the “New Specimen” book - just the “A”s in “A Business Talk” on page 5 are inspiring.

The Palmer & Rey’s book, that is.

AGL - Andre

03.19.08 / 1pm

Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!

03.30.08 / 1pm

I had no words on my previous comment, but I should have said: Thank You Half! You’r da man!

Louis

06.03.08 / 3am

The Type catalogues are great. There are more on the site.
the copy of the ATF 1923 catalogue on the site is not perfect.
I scanned my copy of the catalogue into a pdf file,it is quite karge.When I put it in cd disks I spread it over 5 disks. It is in color and is clear. some of the pages are a little crooked .
I tried to send it to the librarym but can’t figure out how to do it. Would you like a copy, ar can you help get it on the net..
Lou