Typophile

HAL 9000 telemetry display from 2001: A Space Odyssey

Kim Slawson

This is the telemetry font from HAL 9000 documented here: http://typesetinthefuture.com/2001-a-space-odyssey/

Any ideas? Not sure if the ones are actual one glyphs or the letter I.

Thanks!

I was about to post the same ID request but the search turned this up, so I'm bumping it.

Not sure if the ones are actual one glyphs or the letter I

It looks like it’s done with a typewriter, so it could well be that there even wasn’t a digit |1|.

Orator, designed in 1962 for IBM, is fairly close for all numerals, including an open _4_ and banker's flat top _3_. Substitute _I_ for _1_. https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/linotype/orator/
Don

Good call, Don, looking into Orator I found Orator 10 (http://www.myfonts.com/fonts/tilde/orator-10/), wich appears a bit wider, thus a slightly better match for the letters. Then I checked again the article from which the image is taken (there's a picture of a dashboard with an IBM logo on it... I was looking for a pun ;-) and noticed this:

UPDATE: Heather, in the comments to this post, has correctly identified this font as Manifold from the DSG IBM Selectric Type Element Catalog.

I agree Riccardo, Manifold it is.
Unfortunately we are stuck with having only the Orator digital versions. I suppose the easiest way to mimic Manifold is to expand the width of Orator, perhaps by something over 120% and, if a closer match is desired, modify a few characters, such as _G_, _Q_, _@_, _$_, and _&_. Also some revision of the vertical alignment of the various numbers.
Don

A typed character set of Manifold for the IBM Selectric
Useful for reference comparison if you want to fine tune Orator to make something like HAL 9000
Don

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