''Pantographia'', with the full title being ''Pantographia; containing accurate copies of all the known alphabets in the world; together with an English explanation of the peculiar force or power of each letter'', is the title of a 1799 work on
writing system
A writing system is a method of visually representing verbal communication, based on a script and a set of rules regulating its use. While both writing and speech are useful in conveying messages, writing differs in also being a reliable form ...
s and
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
by
Edmund Fry
Edmund Fry (1754–1835) was an English type-founder.
Early life
Fry was the son of Joseph Fry, and member of the Bristol Fry family, born at Bristol. He studied medicine; took the degree of M.D. at Edinburgh, and spent some time at St Georg ...
, one of the most learned of the English typefounders of his day.
Fry provided a description of each alphabet on the right-handed pages with a specimen of the full range of the alphabet on the left. Fry spent sixteen years researching the book, which contains more than 200 specimens, with writing systems from
Abyssinia
The Ethiopian Empire (), also formerly known by the exonym Abyssinia, or just simply known as Ethiopia (; Amharic and Tigrinya: ኢትዮጵያ , , Oromo: Itoophiyaa, Somali: Itoobiya, Afar: ''Itiyoophiyaa''), was an empire that historica ...
to
New Zealand
New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...
, including 20 varieties of
Chaldean, 39 of the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, 8 Egyptian, 11 Hebrew, 7 Irish, 6 Malayan, 7 Arabic, 7
Phoenician, 7 Samaritan, one Tibetan, and 2 Welsh.
Extant copies of Fry's ''Pantographia'' are exceedingly rare but at least one sound specimen is preserved in the collection of the
American Antiquarian Society
The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...
.
References
External links
*
*
*
*
Typography
{{typ-stub