''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 comprises a set of symbols, called a ''script'', as well as the rules by which the script represents a particular language. The earliest writing appeared during the late 4th millennium BC. Throughout history, each independen ...

s and

typography Typography is the art and technique of Typesetting, arranging type to make written language legibility, legible, readability, readable and beauty, appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, Point (typogra ...

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 Abyssinia (; also known as Abyssinie, Abissinia, Habessinien, or Al-Habash) was an ancient region in the Horn of Africa situated in the northern highlands of modern-day Ethiopia and Eritrea.Sven Rubenson, The survival of Ethiopian independence, ...

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

, including 20 varieties of

Chaldean Chaldean (also Chaldaean or Chaldee) may refer to: Language * an old name for the Aramaic language, particularly Biblical Aramaic. See Chaldean Catholic Church#Terminology, Chaldean misnomer * Suret, a modern Aramaic language spoken by Chaldean C ...

, 39 of the

Greek Greek may refer to: 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 of all kno ...

, 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