On Oct 19, 10:30*pm, Tom Anderson wrote:
Evening all,

Jock Kinneir and Margaret Calvert designed modern road signage. Okay,
that's a wild and ahistorical oversimplification, but this is my thread,
and what i say goes.

I went to see a film this evening [1], and the director, who took
questions afterwards, mentioned in passing that as well as the typeface,
Calvert and Kinneir had invented the hexagonal pattern that you can see,
faintly, in the retroreflective coating. Is this true, or was either he
talking rubbish, or i misunderstanding?

This fascinating and joyously obscure article on the history of
retroreflective signs doesn't mention the connection, and indeed indicates
that the hexagonal pattern arrived on the scene in 1971, long after
Kinneir and Calvert and done their work:

http://www.rema.org.uk/pdf/history-r...-materials.pdf

I've never come across that mentioned about C&K before - I think
whatever retroreflectivity there was back in the early days was fairly
primitive by modern standards - indeed, whilst being wholly aware that
they're likely to have lost their retroreflective magic over time, if
one finds an older sign then it is I think only the
'features' (lettering, border, arrows, diagrams, 'icons' etc) that are
retroreflective (and not, I don't think, with any hexagonal
patterning), whilst nowadays the whole sign is retroreflective (must
admit I'd probably just say reflective but I wouldn't want to look
stupid in front of those who aren't afraid of big words).


[1]http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff/node/493- reasonably good if you like that
sort of thing; it's certainly got me hopping mad about the Enclosures.

As anyone with any thread of decency should be. Not entirely sure what
we should do about it now - our German correspondent would not have
any such hesitation I'm sure. I however am not even sure if it should
get a capitalised E - though I'm also not too sure whether such
trivial concerns such as capitalisation really matter or not when it
comes to such an issue - though I am sure Marge and Jock would have a
thing or two to say about the importance and impact of capitalisation,
particularly w.r.t. mechanically reproduced text (and I'm sure you did
it to highlight that very point).