Cartier Roman & Italic – type specimen, Carl Dair, 1967

Starting with the first generation of hot-metal machines, manufacturers divided the set width of each character into 18 vertical units. This system allowed typesetting machines to calculate how many characters would fit on a line, and it also gave type designers a method to assign relative widths consistently across the alphabet.

Mergenthaler Linotype – the manufacturer of the Linofilm system – used an 18-unit grid, meaning every character had to be defined within those 18 units. For example, the widest characters, such as a capital ‘W’, were typically assigned the full 18 units, while narrow characters like ‘i’ or punctuation marks used much less. Film negatives were severely limited as to the number of characters they could hold, which explains why Dair’s designs for the maple leaf and the fleur-de-lis ornaments are crossed out – there simply wasn’t room on the grid.

When photo-typesetting replaced metal, manufacturers introduced a more refined 54-unit system, offering finer control over spacing and alignment. This remained standard until the advent of digital PostScript fonts in the 1980s. – Rod McDonald

This small sheet also holds special meaning for the Canadian Typography Archives. In 1984, while leaving work at Mono Lino, Rod McDonald noticed it lying atop a pile of discarded paper in a large garbage bin. Recognizing its value, he quickly retrieved the sheet along with a few related items that he later donated to the Carl Dair papers at the Robertson Davies Library, Massey College, University of Toronto. McDonald has said that this chance encounter played a significant role in sparking his lifelong interest in Canadian typographic history. – CTA