Gorton

The principal variants included Gorton Normal, Gorton Condensed and Gorton Extended. George Gorton later licensed the Taylor-Hobson system for use in the United States. Gorton lettering was used for engraved labels, signs, instrument panels and equipment markings. Gorton styles were also discussed in United States government research on the legibility of alphanumeric characters.

Taylor, Taylor & Hobson was an optical and precision-engineering company based in Leicester, England. An engraving machine produced by the company was illustrated in an 1891 trade publication. The machine was intended in part for engraving information on lens mounts. William Taylor subsequently patented an engraving-machine mechanism in which the cutting spindle was carried on a hinged arm controlled by a lighter pantograph mechanism. The United States version of Taylor's patent dates from 1895, following an application made in 1894. The George Gorton Machine Co. later licensed the Taylor-Hobson design and applied its operating principles to its own pantograph engraving machines. The surviving licensing documentation dates the relationship between the two companies to the 1890s.

George Gorton established a machine shop in Racine, Wisconsin, in the early 1890s. A 1916 history of Racine County states that Gorton entered the manufacture of machine tools and engraving machines in 1892. The same source records that the company produced engraving machines ranging from equipment for extremely small lettering to machines used for marking industrial rolls. It also produced matrix-making machinery for typewriter, typecasting, type-foundry and adding-machine manufacturers. By 1916, the company's products were being sold internationally. Gorton continued to manufacture pantograph engraving equipment during the twentieth century. A 1950 instruction manual describes the use of copy type, copyholders and tracing styles on its pantograph machines. A United States Army technical manual issued in 1984 for the Gorton/Lars P1-2 pantograph engraving machine likewise describes standard brass characters as "copy" used to guide the pantograph through a tracing stylus.

George Gorton Machine Co. referred to the physical templates used with its engraving machines as Master Copy. Its 1952 catalogue defined Master Copy as the templates or patterns from which characters or designs were reproduced on a pantograph machine. The catalogue states that the pantograph could reproduce a Master Copy at a reduced scale, in some applications down to one-tenth or one-hundredth of the template size, depending on the machine used. Sets contained alphabets, numerals, punctuation and special characters engraved on individual brass bodies. The individual pieces could be assembled in a typeholder to form the required inscription before being traced with the machine. The catalogue offered Master Copy Type in several forms, including sunk V-groove, sunk square-bottom groove and relief forms, as well as plain and reversed characters. Standard templates were made from engraving brass; hardened or chromium-plated versions were also offered for production work. Gorton also manufactured special copy type, masters, patterns and templates to customer specifications. In its 1952 catalogue, the company stated that it had specialized in this work for more than fifty years.

Gorton Normal was the principal Gorton lettering style. The company's 1952 catalogue described it as its most popular face and as the most widely used of its typefaces. The catalogue characterized the design as having relatively few sharp corners, allowing rapid tracing with a smooth movement of the pantograph stylus. It also stated that simple, single-line characters with few corners, including the Gorton face, could be cut more quickly than more complicated engraving styles and were preferable for legibility. Gorton Normal was available as capitals and with matching lowercase sets. Sets also contained numerals, punctuation and other symbols.

Gorton Condensed was a narrower version intended for general engraving where reduced character width was useful. The 1952 catalogue described it as the company's second most widely used face after Gorton Normal. Gorton Condensed capitals could be combined with the Gorton lowercase set and with capitals from other Gorton widths. The catalogue specifies common center-line measurements for corresponding characters of the same nominal size.

Gorton Extended was a wider version of the Normal design. The Gorton catalogue described it as the same general style as Gorton Normal but intended for applications requiring greater character width. The company recommended Normal in cases where the additional width was not required. The same lowercase alphabet could be used with Gorton Normal, Condensed and Extended capitals.

George Gorton Machine Co. sold additional engraving alphabets alongside the three principal Gorton widths. Its 1952 catalogue includes Gothic, Extra Condensed Gothic, Inclined Gothic, Century and other styles. The catalogue described Extra Condensed Gothic as the company's third most popular face, after Gorton Normal and Gorton Condensed, and recommended it for applications including rollers, discs and numeral wheels.

Gorton was designed as single-line lettering for mechanical reproduction. In pantograph engraving, the operator followed the groove or outline of the master character with a tracing stylus while a linked cutting spindle reproduced the movement on the workpiece. The size of the engraved result depended on the size of the copy and the reduction setting of the pantograph. Different tracing styles and cutters were used for recessed and relief engraving. Gorton's catalogue measured the height of its lettering from the center line of the strokes on the master character. The later U.S. military specification MIL-M-18012B similarly specified center-line measurement for mechanically engraved letters and numerals on opaque surfaces.

The Gorton family was incorporated into United States military specifications for aircraft displays and controls. The Department of Defense specification MIL-M-18012B, dated 20 July 1964, covered markings for aircrew-station displays and control panels. For engraved lettering on control panels it listed Gorton Extended, Gorton Normal and Gorton Condensed as acceptable commercial fonts. The specification separately listed Gorton Extended and Gorton Moderne among acceptable engraving fonts for numerals. It also prescribed letter spacing, word spacing, lettering orientation and stroke-width requirements for panel markings. The National Bureau of Standards included Gorton Extended, Gorton Moderne, Gorton Normal and Gorton Condensed in its 1967 reference handbook Legibility of Alphanumeric Characters and Other Symbols II. The handbook treated them as engraving styles in its survey of alphanumeric forms used in displays. The continued military use of Gorton equipment is also documented by the Army's 1984 technical manual for the Gorton/Lars P1-2 pantograph engraver.

Gorton lettering appeared in human-factors documentation produced for the United States space program. The 1969 Databook for Human Factors Engineers, prepared for NASA, included data on lettering and display design for aerospace equipment. Gorton styles were among the commercial lettering forms referenced in this material. NASA's later Man-Systems Integration Standards also included Gorton Normal and Gorton Condensed among commercial lettering styles used for engraved labels and workstation markings. Gorton lettering was also used on hardware associated with the Apollo Guidance Computer. The computer's Display and Keyboard, or DSKY, served as the astronaut interface to the guidance computer. The Virtual Apollo Guidance Computer project, which has collected and examined surviving Apollo engineering drawings, identifies Gorton Condensed on one DSKY drawing and Gorton Normal on other versions.

The precise date of the Gorton letterforms is uncertain. Taylor-Hobson engraving machinery is documented by 1891, while George Gorton began manufacturing engraving machines in Racine in the early 1890s. Gorton's licensing relationship with Taylor, Taylor & Hobson is documented later in that decade. The available sources establish a relationship between the Taylor-Hobson engraving system and the machines produced by George Gorton, but they do not identify an individual designer of the alphabet later marketed as Gorton Normal. The introduction date of the typeface should therefore not be equated automatically with the date of the surviving licensing agreement.

Mechanical lettering systems using templates were widely employed in engineering and technical drawing during the twentieth century. Keuffel and Esser sold the Leroy lettering system, which used templates, a scriber and a pen to produce standardized lettering on drawings. In a 1963 catalogue the company described Leroy lettering as being widely used in industrial drafting rooms and as effectively a standard for engineering drawings. Gorton and Leroy letterforms have been compared because both belong to the tradition of mechanically generated monoline technical lettering. A direct historical relationship between individual Leroy alphabets and specific Gorton master alphabets should be distinguished from visual similarity unless supported by documentation.