Petite Histoire des lettres / A Brief History of Letters

We read them without thinking about it, but each letter conforms to a certain geometry, an x-height, a baseline, curves that are either well-defined or deliberately broken. This book offers a different perspective on the alphabet: that of a mathematician. From monks' quills to Bézier curves, from Garamond's punches to today's parametric fonts, Étienne Ghys explores the history of letters through the tools that shape them : rulers and compasses, modular grids, formulas, algorithms. Why do lowercase letters have to be bolder than uppercase letters? How can you construct a harmonious 'S' using code? How does typographic writing relate to the concerns of surveyors, engineers and programmers? A Brief History of Letters is a journey through five centuries of forms, ideas and techniques. At the crossroads of graphic arts and mathematics, it invites us to rediscover what is right before our eyes... but which we no longer see.