In 1535 A.D., German artist Albrecht Dürer invented computer fonts. Well, no, not really. But he would have. I’ll explain.

Pretend you were talking over the phone with a guy who had never seen the alphabet. This guy understands a few basic terms, like “square,” “circle,” and “line.” But he has no earthly idea how to make an A, or a B, or any of the others. Do you think you could instruct him, over the phone, using only those few simple terms, how to draw all the letters?

Think it’s easy? Okay, try “B.” A straight line with two humps? Sorry, not nearly exact enough. A line from where to where? Where do the humps go, exactly? And for that matter, what’s a “hump”? Not so easy.

And what if rather than a general “B” shape, you had to instruct your unlettered friend how to make a perfect New Times Roman “B”? Or Palatino, or Trajan, or some other typeface? All but impossible! It is indeed fortunate that the need hardly ever arises to give verbal instructions for drafting precise letterforms.

Except, that need does arise, and frequently. Millions of times every second.

If you’re reading this page, you have a computer. And your computer is loaded up with “fonts.” Except, it isn’t. Just as the “photos” you may have on your computer are not photographs, what we call “fonts” are not fonts; they are verbal instructions for drafting precise letterforms. Your computer has no idea what a “B” is. To display a “B,” it reads and follows the instructions in the “font.”

Dürer didn’t have a computer. But for some reason (those were some crazy days) he thought it would be a good idea to describe how to draft all the letters of the Roman alphabet, using only geometric terms such as “square,” “circle,” and “line.” These instructions were published in 1535 as Of the Just Shaping of Letters. It was one of those books that changes the very course of history, like the Summa Theologicae, and the Harry Potter series.

Dürer’s alphabet of 23 letters (J, U, and W were omitted because they aren’t used in Latin) was quite elegant, but that’s not why the book was such a breakthrough. Many other artists had published elegant alphabets before him. What made Of the Just Shaping of Letters special was Albrecht’s eccentric idea that the instructions for making letters should be written entirely in geometry. The book was illustrated with specimens of the letters, but the point is, you could draw those letters yourself, precisely and perfectly, without seeing the pictures! Dürer had invented the science of typography. If he had not also achieved so much in other areas of learning, he would still be remembered for this little book alone.

As I wrote yesterday, Of the Just Shaping of Letters is still in print, but it wasn’t available anywhere online. That changed today, just a few minutes ago in fact. Click here to download the 48-page PDF (4.6 megabytes) of Of the Just Shaping of Letters, scanned by me in beautifully crisp 600-ppi resolution, suitable for printing, from the 1917 English translation. And learn from the master what it has taken the rest of the world nearly 500 years to figure out.

I am working on a new website based on Dürer’s alphabet. This is a cool project. It is much, much more than just putting the book online — it is, I think, the website Dürer would have made himself, if he could have. I’ll blog more about it in coming days. Stay tuned.