Incidentally, this isn't an IBM typeface. It was made available for the IBM Selectric typewriter by GP, which also made elements for some of the more popular IBM typefaces, but at a lower price. GP also made such things for the Selectric that IBM didn't offer as an astrology element and an Old English element (they even also made one for the Selectric Composer).

Check out
FF Magda
Regular, Mono and Office by Lineto
Editor and Politics by Optimo
F

Thanks Florian. Your examples have the same general shape as Report, but one difference that jumps out at me is that in all these example fonts (described in layman's terms by a non-typographist [i.e. me]), all the lines in the characters are exactly the same thickness, whereas in Report they are weighted differently within individual characters. I think that very factor is what has always given it the eye appeal for me.

Thanks Quadibloc. You are exactly correct about GP; the snippet was taken from their highly-nostalgic handbook here:

http://www.selectric.org/selectric/GPfonts/index.html

My electric daisy-wheel was an unidentified Facit model, for what it's worth to this discussion.

Ivan, I didn't realize that Report is not monolinear, i.e. it exhibits a stroke contrast, or stroke modulation. Do you have a larger sample?

Thanks for the vocabulary help. :-)

I found an old hard copy and, after much cursing of the highly overrated name of HP, managed to get it scanned in:

Thanks. I see. Alas, I don’t know of a font that looks like this. All the digitizations or digital interpretations mentioned above are cleaned/idealized. FF Magda has various degrees of smudge, but not this vertical stress.

The smudge factor, of course, is an artifact of hand-typing using a flaky carbon ribbon onto not-so-great paper, one level of 1980s-quality xerox copying, then scanning at 600 dpi, that is then highly compressed into a jpeg file so the site would accept the upload, and then over-magnified for display here. In other words, it isn't supposed to be smudged, but clean. Saving the jpeg file off and shrinking the display down to something more reasonable might give a better feel for the overall general typeface appearance.

By the way, I did see a lot of Magda-like typewriter copy during the same general era (70s-80s) in various paper newsletters to which I was subscribed, almost all from Europe. That particular typeface didn't seem to catch on as well here in the 'States.

Anyone? :-)

Bumpola.

At least close:

http://www.fontpark.net/en/font/sv-basic-manual/

There is a more recent version: http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/svbasicmanual.html

Hi there; I'm the creator behind the SV Basic Manual font. In fact, it is one of my very first attempts at drawing a font, and it probably shows. I did not personally own a typewriter with this font (and thus I was not aware of its name), but I had a computer manual written with it. A particularly important problem was that at the time I did not own a scanner; however, I had access to a fax and a modem, and so I managed to get a bitmap template by faxing to my computer! Obviously, the resolution was very limiting, and some of the subtleties were no doubt lost.

(The more recent update, version 1.1, included vowels with ogonek, since that was requested. I don't remember doing any other improvements.)

I can not make any promises, but it would indeed be interesting to attempt to redo the digitization from scratch, now that I have a high-resolution scanner, and perhaps at least a little more experience with vector drawing. To that end, if anyone could donate high resolution scans of a, preferably, first generation document, I would be very grateful: in particular, I need examples of @|•½¼²³¶§†, which did not appear in my manual; also (if they exist) _\`^~, as well as any other rare characters.

In the meantime, I'm afraid the current version will have to suffice. I'm not aware of any other digitization of "Report".

Hi. I like this font. I found old book typed on IBM Selectronic typewriter and there is (I think) glyphs which you missing.
First is "filled" X in X80=128 and second is arrow used as ^.

Hello! The font in your sample certainly is similar, but I don't think it is the same; for example, the numeral 3 looks a bit more narrow, and the crossbar of t extends further to the left. Nevertheless, I would be very interested in a high resolution scan (preferably at least 600 DPI); you can mail it to johan.winge@telia.com in case you don't find a place to upload it to.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry. I haven't better scan but this crappy 200*200 dpi.
Look at number 1 in first post (and my post too). There is difference between scans and SV Basic Manual glyph. On scans 1 look more like samll L with serif at the bottom and horizontal (not diagonal) nib on top.

Oh, I see; thanks anyway!

I have now done some research, and it seems that the 1980's BASIC manual that I had as my template when I made the SV Basic Manual font most likely was printed with a Swedish Facit typewriter. According to the typewriter experts I consulted, this particular font was very common with the Facit typewriters, if not the standard during this period, and it went under the name "Cubic 10/12 FA 46". As edo_nick rightly points out, it is not exactly identical to Report; most notably, the numeral "1" looks like the letter "l" in Report, but in Cubic it is different. (Curiously though, the glyph "½" in Cubic has the "l" shape; yet it is not identical to the ½ of Report, for that one has a slanted solidus, while that of Cubic is horizontal.)

Evidently, it was not at all uncommon that different typewriter manufacturers had similar fonts, which all differed in some small details. For example Triumph-Adler has a font named "Prestige-Cubic", which is identical to Report in some respects, and to Facit's Cubic in others; yet it has a "W" and "w" which are wider at the bottom than those of either Report or Cubic.

I have now acquired a nice specimen from the Facit typewriter, which I intend to digitize. (And so replace SV Basic Manual, which I already regard as deprecated.) I guess that with an alternative glyph shape for "1" it will pass as a remake of Report as well. If the administrators agree, I will start a separate thread in the Critique forum, where I'll discuss this digitisation process.

Kindly advise which corner of Critique, once you get started. :-)

Of course! By the way, the big sample you posted (about Vera Tolstoy) seems to be written in what I suppose to be a true Report -- it is certainly different in many subtle ways from the Cubic that I have. Is that really written with your unidentified Facit typewriter? Or has it another origin?

It was definitely typed on a 1981-ish vintage Facit daisy wheel.

It would appear that Cubic probably evolved over time. See, for instance, this version from 1964, and compare it to my sample:

http://munk.org/typecast/2011/04/23/1964-nomda-blue-book-facit-font-styles/

...and I would observe that it is closer to the style of the "FF Magda" typeface than it is to IBM Report.

The actual digitization process will be covered in this new thread.