Rusher's Patent Types were the characters of an experimental
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ( ...
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is a design of Letter (alphabet), letters, Numerical digit, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, ...
invented,
patented
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
and promoted by Philip Rusher in
Banbury
Banbury is an historic market town and civil parish on the River Cherwell in Oxfordshire, South East England. The parish had a population of 54,335 at the 2021 Census.
Banbury is a significant commercial and retail centre for the surrounding ...
,
England
England is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It is located on the island of Great Britain, of which it covers about 62%, and List of islands of England, more than 100 smaller adjacent islands. It ...
, from 1802 onwards. The typeface removed the
descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a grapheme that extends below the Baseline (typography), baseline of a typeface, font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal li ...
s from the
lower-case letters and shortened the
ascenders, which Rusher hoped would make the typeface "more uniform" and save paper. The typeface was used for a few books but did not become popular.
Patent
Rusher
patented
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
the design on 20 May 1802, stating that by his invention "the letters will occupy less room...each line may be placed immediately under the body of the preceding line, and thus a great part of the paper...may be saved, or
spaces may be placed between the lines to extend them to the usual distance asunder. In either case the printing will appear more uniform and beautiful".
Rusher's patent showed a design for the
roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of Roman civilization
*Epistle to the Romans, shortened to Romans, a letter w ...
or upright style, and for an
italic apparently never manufactured as
metal type
In physical typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, used—when lined up with others—to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand wit ...
.
Rusher gave his occupation as bankers' clerk in the patent;
he became manager of the town's Old Bank.
However, his brother William Rusher, originally a schoolmaster, had become a bookseller and stationer in the town by 1785,
became
parish clerk in 1795 and reached a prominent position in the town as a printer of directories and guides to reading and arithmetic.
William Rusher's son
John Golby Rusher would become a long-lived and successful publisher who continued to sell books in the town for over three decades, particularly known for his books of nursery rhymes which were distributed nationally.
An 1802 review of patents in ''
The Monthly Magazine'' expressed interest: "although the alterations in several of the letters...do not appear necessary, yet we cannot help thinking that his plan...would add greatly to the beauty of
fine printing; and it is obvious that most of the characters already in use might still be employed in the business, consequently the expence in adopting this invention could not be very great."
The patent was also reported in Germany and later in the Netherlands.
''Rasselas''

Rusher commissioned custom metal type characters, or sorts, from the
Caslon Type Foundry in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
, to adapt a
14-point size type they sold. According to
Frederic Goudy, in 1894 the
punches used to create the type were rediscovered by the foundry during a stock check. Rusher's characters were only the
lower-case b d f h k l g j p y characters and fi ff
ligatures;
as ''The Monthly Magazine'' had predicted, the originals were used for the other letters. A
small capital was used for the q, although Rusher's patent shows a cursive form (and alternative cursive forms for the ascending characters with forward-facing serifs, not used in the type as made).
The reduction in the height of the ascenders increases the apparent
x-height
upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the le ...
relative to the ascending characters.
The type adapted was a
modern face or Didone type, a style of typeface which had recently become popular and would remain the standard typeface for general-purpose printing for the whole of the nineteenth century.
As a first use for his "new mode of printing", in 1804 Rusher published an edition of ''
Rasselas'', a novel by
Samuel Johnson
Samuel Johnson ( – 13 December 1784), often called Dr Johnson, was an English writer who made lasting contributions as a poet, playwright, essayist, moralist, literary critic, sermonist, biographer, editor, and lexicographer. The ''Oxford ...
which was popular at the time.
It was printed by Cheney (later Cheney & Sons), a local firm of printers in Banbury,
and advertised as sold by three booksellers in London and a relative, J. Rusher, in
Reading
Reading is the process of taking in the sense or meaning of symbols, often specifically those of a written language, by means of Visual perception, sight or Somatosensory system, touch.
For educators and researchers, reading is a multifacete ...
.
A copy at the
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...
advertises that "since part of the book was printed, it will be seen that a material improvement has been made in the legibility of the new letters."
The form of the 'g' varies, in Goudy's view reflecting a change in editing policy midway through the printing process: in some places the sort used is always the lower-case form with no descender, in others a small cap character was used at the beginning of words.
Goudy also thought the patented characters were altered after part of the book was printed by slimming them down.
Edwin Pearson, who wrote a history of children's books printed in Banbury in 1890, had information that sales of the book had grossed £5 5s.
Retrospective reviews of the type have not been favourable. In the nineteenth century
Charles Henry Timperley felt that the improved types were "any thing but what the preamble of the patent would have us believe"
and Bigmore and Wyman considered it "about as ugly a specimen of typography as can be conceived".
Goudy thought that the design was hampered by bad execution: "little care had been taken to give to his new forms the same weight of stems as in the face into which they were interpolated".
Alastair Johnston felt that the type is "anything but uniform and beautiful" and that the new characters felt particularly uncomfortable in the word
Egypt
Egypt ( , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country spanning the Northeast Africa, northeast corner of Africa and Western Asia, southwest corner of Asia via the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea to northe ...
, where a large part of the novel is set: "that word, with its three descending letters in an awkward huddle, pops up frequently."
Later history
A few more uses were made of the type. The book advertised a forthcoming edition of ''
The Deserted Village'' in the type, and the Cheney ledger suggested it was apparently printed,
but no copy has been found.
Philip Rusher made another try with a pamphlet, ''The Farmer's Friend'' in 1817,
and his nephew John Golby Rusher used the type in 1852 for another book, ''A Complete Guide to the Mystery and Management of Bees'' by William White.
The typeface after this again remained unused.
According an 1894 article on the type in ''Caslon's Circular'', the news magazine of the Caslon foundry, from when the punches were rediscovered, "whether this patent type gave rise to the practice or not, we cannot tell, but very many of the best fonts issued at the present day can be supplied on various bodies for which special ascending and descending sorts have been engraved, but to do away with descenders entirely...has never been since attempted".
The punches were advertised for sale on
eBay
eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
in February 2021; they had apparently ended up owned by Cheney & Sons, the firm which had printed the book, before it closed. They were acquired by
St Bride Library.
See also
*
Alphabet 26
Notes
References
{{Typography terms
Didone serif typefaces
Banbury
Printing in England
Constructed scripts
Writing systems introduced in 1804