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The Birth of Times New Roman

JA February 17

Over the last seventy years or so, Times New Roman has become the default typeface of the English language, with readers and publishers alike warming to its deft combination of delicate serifs and deceptively simple lines. Yet, for all its humble appearances, the font has caused a great deal of uproar in typography circles of late, due to a dispute over its origins.

Until recently, type consultant Stanley Morison, along with illustrator Victor Lardent, has traditionally been credited with the design. The story goes that Morison once criticised the Times for their ugly serif font, which was notoriously difficult to read. The newspaper issued a responding challenge, asking Morison to come up with his own idea. He did, citing old fonts such as the sixteenth-century Plantin as his inspiration. Lardent added the finishing touches and, on 3 October 1932, Times New Roman made its impressive debut.

However, Mike Parker, a leading typographical expert from the United States, has a different theory. He argues in the Financial Times that Times New Roman was created by William Starling Burgess, a wealthy aviator from Boston who may have dabbled briefly in typography. According to Parker, Burgess once collaborated with a company named Lanston Monotype to create a font for his shipyard business. This was in 1904, some thirty years before the ‘official’ launch of Times New Roman by Morison. Yet before the typeface could be finalised, Burgess’s passion for aviation won out and the original sketches were filed away at Lanston under the name ‘Number 54’, where they would remain until discovered by Canadian printer Gerald Giampa almost one hundred years later. Together with Parker, Giampa speculated that Morison had come across the drawings when researching in the early 1930s, and used them as his basic template.

This hypothesis has proven far from popular. While typography may appear to be a gentle, painstaking art, it is deeply competitive, and an accusation of plagiarism is the ultimate insult. Morison’s biographer, Nicolas Barker, has labelled the whole affair ‘a rather childish joke’, arguing that Giampa only advanced the theory so that he could establish a patent over the designs. Similarly, Canadian typographer Jim Rimmer dismissed Giampa as a ‘pathological liar’.

The debate is further complicated by the fact that Parker’s only proof is a bronze pattern plate featuring the letter ‘B’ in a design eerily similar to Times New Roman. Such plates, according to Parker, had drifted out of use by 1915. All other evidence has sadly been destroyed—Burgess’s shipyard was burned down in 1918, the London offices of Lanston Monotype were bombed in 1941 and its Washington archives closed as a result of asbestos poisoning. Similarly, in 2000, Giampa’s personal collection was flooded and all related documents lost. It seems we may never know for sure who can claim the credit for the ubiquitous typeface, although perhaps this is strangely fitting. Even Morison himself once wrote that Times New Roman ‘has the merit of not looking as if it had been designed by somebody in particular’.



  • Originally published in Newsreel, Meanjin Vol 68/4.

 

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