Introduction

I first heard of what are commonly (but not quite accurately) called the "Hershey fonts" in the early 1980s, but did no serious research into them until 2003. At this time I had the need to add Greek characters to the CAD program I prefer, VARKON. While drawing new characters proved to be relatively straightforward, I soon realized that I didn't have the artistic skills to draw a Greek typeface. My solution was to adapt from Dr. Hershey's repertory of glyphs.

I could have done only the Greek characters, but typography is addictive and the scripts to perform the format translations were not limited to the Greek subset of the glyphs. I soon found myself, therefore, wanting to add all (or at least many) of the Hershey occidental glyphs. (Note: I am still far from this goal, though I now have the tools in place.)

This led to a study of the source material, and this in turn led to the realization that this source material, while available, was scattered and often confusing. Dr. Hershey's work was done over a period of some decades, and was documented in a series of brief reports. Moreover, his work had been expanded upon at various times by others. I quickly found myself to be lost.

The most comprehensive study of which I am aware of the Hershey repertory of occidental glyphs is that which appears in the GNU Plotutils software package by Robert Maier, et. al. [gp241]. This package also contains a more comprehensive distribution of glyphs, including both Dr. Hershey's and others, than may be found in some other sources. I am grateful for this resource.

With the GNU Plotutils bibliography in hand (or on screen) I did the obvious thing: I began to acquire and to read Dr. Hershey's papers. I'm by no means finished with this task, but this present document constitutes the state of my notes so far.

These are just reading notes; they're not authoritative. I would very much appreciate learning more about Dr. Hershey and his achievements, typographical, cartographical, mathematical, or other.

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