Typophile

1938 - a book about wood.

iiwekei

Here is a book about wood that i found. (well i found it at a friends house but they didnt really care so i took it)

its pretty interesting if not a little bit sloppy in the way it has been set. Well maybe not sloppy but there are better type set books.

My question is this. At the foot of some of the pages there is a number (4,604) just to the left of the page number with a letter (from B to M) on the right on the page number. I think they are section markers and the number i can only guess is a word count. Is this right and if it is why is it there. was this a visual note to the book maker?

anyway hope this makes sense and if not just have a look at the book. its alright.

thanks

P

Theunis de Jong

Does this book have 22 roman-numbered pages before the page numbered "1"?

As for the "word count", nah, I don't think so, at least not for a single page. This doesn't even look like more than a couple of hundred characters. Does the number increment in a fairly regular steps?

Oh, and I totally dig this use of all-caps, then small caps, then indented regular text, for a one glance hierarchical view! Complete with extra long em-dash, and even a typical space before the colon. What year is this from? It mentions "aircraft", I actually thought the space before colons was much older than those ... (*)

Can you take a close-up picture of the font itself?

(*) Edit: oops -- 1938. Got it ...

Craig Eliason

Yes, I'd guess the letters are signature marks.

George Tulloch

The letter L on the right will be a signature mark, but I would guess that the 4,604 on the left will be the printer's job number for this title. It could be useful for this identification to be known in the bindery, partly to ensure that signatures from one book weren't accidentally bound with signatures from another; and partly, perhaps, for administrative purposes, so that workers would know which job number to enter on their work dockets (or something like that).

iiwekei

here are a few more images. i thought that the number might be the total number of words in the whole book. I think there is an easy way of me estimating it so ill have a look into that myslef.

here are a few more images from the book. a close up of the font and the contents page witch is beautiful.

P

iiwekei

Its defiantly a signature mark as its at the beginning of each bundle. As for the numbers i still have no idea. (4,604)

thanks all that have helped so far.

when i find some more nice books ill post as i always have loads of questions.

P

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