Cartier Roman & Italic – Final unit values to be used for each character – Carl Dair, 1967

A photocopy of the character sets for Cartier Roman and Italic with the notations that Carl Dair made, in red pencil, for the final Linofilm unit values. The unit values are the widths assigned to each character in a font. That width includes both the character and the space on either side of the character. Some letters, such as the ‘W’ typically occupy the full width and in some cases even extend slightly beyond. Unit values are needed for the machines to calculate the number of characters per line. They also aid type designers in building internal continuity in a design. At the time, Mergenthaler Linotype, the manufacturer of the Linofilm, used an 18 unit grid (font). You can see that Dair assigned the widest measure, 18 units, to the ‘W’. Subsequent photo-typesetting machines would use a finer 54 unit grid which remained in use until PostScript.

This little piece of paper also has a special significance for the CTA. One summer day in 1984 as Rod McDonald was leaving work at Mono Lino, he walked by a row of large garbage bins and this letter caught his attention. A little surprised at finding such an important piece of information in the garbage, he quickly retrieved it along with a few other related items. He later donated all these items to The Carl Dair papers at the Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, University of Toronto. McDonald credits much of his lifelong interest in Canadian typographic history to his chance finding of this letter.