Little By Little

Summary

Hyperfixed Podcast Episode Summary: "Little By Little"

Release Date: May 22, 2025

In the episode titled "Little By Little," host Alex Goldman delves into the intricate journey of recreating a beloved but enigmatic font used in electronic design software. This episode intertwines technical exploration with personal storytelling, highlighting the collaborative efforts required to preserve and innovate within niche design communities.

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Introduction: The Font Conundrum

The episode begins with Astrid, a Berlin-based designer and co-founder of Bella—a company specializing in synthesizer parts—facing a perplexing issue. After acquiring a new Bella circuit board for her latest music project, Astrid notices a significant difference in the font used for labeling ports and plugs.

Astrid [03:05]: "Astrid is one of the co-founders of a company called Bella that among other things, designs parts for synthesizers."

This subtle change affects the legibility and aesthetic of her equipment, prompting Astrid to seek a solution.

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Identifying the Problem

Upon comparing the new circuit board with her old one, Astrid becomes increasingly dissatisfied with the font's design. The inconsistency in font style detracts from the user experience and functional clarity essential for her work.

Astrid [05:29]: "The font on the circuit board. These millimeter-high letters that tell you the name and function of every little port and plug on this device. It's different than it used to be and it's not nearly as nice."

Astrid's quest to restore the original font leads her to Hyperfixed, where she seeks assistance in uncovering the font's origins and potentially recreating it.

---

The Investigation Begins

Alex Goldman and the Hyperfixed team take on Astrid's challenge, embarking on a meticulous search to identify the creator of the original font. Initial research points to an individual named Andreas Weidner, believed to be involved in the font's redesign for the Eagle PCB layout program.

Andreas Weidner [05:03]: "And the difference I was seeing in these two boards was the font."

Hopeful, the team reaches out to Andreas, anticipating insights into the font's design choices.

---

A Misleading Lead: Andreas Weidner's Contribution

During the interview, Andreas reveals that he developed a new font for Eagle due to dissatisfaction with the existing one. However, it becomes evident that his creation does not match Astrid's beloved font.

Tony Williams [15:15]: "You can very easily buy a program to design outline fonts, but I did not find any program that enabled one to design vector fonts."

Despite his efforts, Andreas's font diverges significantly from what Astrid seeks, leading the team to reassess their approach.

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Uncovering the True Origin: The "Lit Chr" Font

Further investigation uncovers that the original font, known as "Lit Chr," originated from the Turbo Pascal compiler developed by Borland. This discovery shifts the focus to Borland's development team, particularly highlighting Philippe Kahn and a designer named Lisa, who played crucial roles in shaping the font.

Philippe Kahn [29:57]: "This little font that you contacted me for, lit Chr, was composed of vector strokes."

Philippe Kahn elaborates on the technical constraints and design philosophies that influenced "Lit Chr," emphasizing the need for legibility and efficiency in early computing environments.

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Collaboration with Borland: Bridging the Past and Present

Astrid's efforts culminate in connecting with Philippe Kahn, who provides invaluable insights into the font's creation. The team learns that "Lit Chr" was a collaborative effort, heavily influenced by the ISO 3098 standards and the innovative work of designer Lisa.

Philippe Kahn [34:19]: "We worked together to create something very readable. And it's very exciting that you think that it's still an important font."

This revelation underscores the communal nature of early software development and the lasting impact of thoughtful design decisions.

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Conclusion and Legacy: "Little Character"

Inspired by the historical journey, Astrid successfully recreates the font, honoring its legacy while adapting it for contemporary use. She names her recreation "Little Character," symbolizing the meticulous, incremental efforts that preserved a piece of design history.

Astrid [36:50]: "Little Character... was adapted into the Borland graphics interface nearly 40 years ago by a team including Philippe Kahn and a designer we only know as Lisa."

The episode concludes by celebrating the collaborative spirit that drives innovation and the importance of preserving design heritage. Astrid's achievement not only resolves her immediate challenge but also pays homage to the unsung heroes of software design.

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Key Takeaways

• Collaboration in Design: The creation and preservation of "Lit Chr" highlight the importance of teamwork and shared vision in design projects.

• Technical Constraints: Early computing limitations necessitated efficient and legible font designs, influencing aesthetic choices that resonate decades later.

• Legacy and Innovation: Astrid's "Little Character" serves as a bridge between past and present, illustrating how understanding history can inform and enhance modern design endeavors.

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Notable Quotes

• Astrid [03:05]: "Astrid is one of the co-founders of a company called Bella that among other things, designs parts for synthesizers."

• Andreas Weidner [05:03]: "And the difference I was seeing in these two boards was the font."

• Philippe Kahn [29:57]: "This little font that you contacted me for, lit Chr, was composed of vector strokes."

• Astrid [36:50]: "Little Character... was adapted into the Borland graphics interface nearly 40 years ago by a team including Philippe Kahn and a designer we only know as Lisa."

---

"Little By Little" is a testament to the enduring nature of thoughtful design and the relentless pursuit of quality. Through Astrid's story, listeners gain insight into the complexities of design evolution and the profound impact of seemingly small details in our technological world.

Transcript

[Alex Goldman]

Hey there. I'm excited to tell you that one of our favorite Radiotopia siblings, Ear Hustle, is back with a new season. Ear Hustle is a show about life inside prison, but it's not your typical prison Podcast co hosts Nigel Poore and Earlonne woods have recently been spending time at four California prisons and have a season's worth of funny, surprising and unforgettable stories to share. In a recent episode, they were able to visit a groundbreaking prison hospice where they spoke to men who are grappling with the reality of dying inside prison. Also coming up this season are stories about the objects people keep inside their prison cells, complicated mom daughter relationships in prison, and incarcerated people who wonder whether they've become too comfortable behind bars. Stories about life on the inside told by those who live it. Find Ear Hustle wherever you get your podcasts.

[Astrid]

This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Progressive Insurance Fiscally responsible financial geniuses Monetary Magic these are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to Progressive and save hundreds. Visit progressive.com to see if you could save Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states or situations. This episode of Hyperfixed is sponsored by HelloFresh. Listeners of Hyperfixed may not know this, but I am a massive fan of the music of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic. So in the spirit of that band, here is a song I wrote to the tune of We Want the Funk. It goes like this I hate to cook. I really hate to cook. In all seriousness, I find cooking very hard. The shopping is hard. I always end up throwing out produce. I make a big stinking mess. I'm bad at remembering recipes and that is why I like HelloFresh. The meals are easy to prepare. They have the exact right amount of ingredients. They come with helpful instructions so even someone as bad at cooking as I am can use them. I recently got the Palermo Prosciutto and Chicken Penne and the Chicken and Bacon Ranch Pasta Bake, which were both great and easy to put together. So if you're like me and you don't enjoy cooking, you can probably learn to like it with HelloFresh. Feel great with meals that fit your spring schedule and make the season even more delicious. Go to hellofresh.com hyperfixed10fm now to get 10 free meals with a free item for life. That's hyperfixed10fm right now to get 10 free meals with A free item for life. One per box with active subscription free meals applied as discount on first box. New subscribers only Varies by plan. Hi, I'm Alex Goldman. This is hyperfixed on this show. Listeners write in with problems big and small. And I solve them. Or at least I try. And if I don't, at least I give a good reason why I can't. This week, little by little.

[Andreas Weidner]

Is that noise, is that room noise gone? Now you know what it is? Usually it might be the mic.

[Astrid]

This is Astrid. She lives in Berlin and she works as a designer. But probably not the kind of designer you're thinking of.

[Andreas Weidner]

Yeah, I've changed this cable many times. But it, it's one of those audio mysteries.

[Astrid]

Astrid is one of the co founders of a company called Bella that among other things, designs parts for synthesizers. The kind of electronic instruments I use to score the show. And if you're not familiar with the latest in digital music technology, imagine a large microchip. This microchip has a pressure sensitive strip on the front. And when you attach this microchip to another machine, say a synthesizer, you can run your finger up and down that strip and it'll make something that sounds like this sound like this or like this. It's an extremely cool job. And yes, I did use the production of this episode to justify my own purchase of one of Bella's signature models. I hope I don't get audited. It's for the episode. I had to make this song with it. But that's not why I'm spending so much time talking about it. The reason I'm talking about it is because these Bella boards are actually where this week's problem begins. So recently, Astrid was working on a music project. And after years of using the same hardware, she decides this new project is a perfect occasion to order herself a brand new Bella circuit board. Okay, so few days later, the board arrives and Astrid is thrilled. But then she notices something's off. Astrid can't quite put her finger on what's different about this thing, but something about it just doesn't feel right. So Astrid reaches into a drawer and she pulls out her old Bella. And as she's staring at these two virtually identical circuit boards, she realizes what's bothering her.

[Andreas Weidner]

And the difference I was seeing in these two boards was the font.

[Astrid]

The font on the circuit board. This like millimeter high letters that tell you the name and function of every little port and plug on this device. It's different than it used to be and it's not nearly as nice.

[Andreas Weidner]

I was like, the old board, this font is amazing. Why don't we use this font?

[Astrid]

This.

[Andreas Weidner]

This font is great. The Letters are really cool. And this A. Oh, I love it so much. And I looked at the new one and I was like, I don't like this at all.

[Astrid]

So Astrid reached out to one of the guys who manufactures Bellis hardware, and she asked him, like, what's the deal with the new font? The old one was so great. This new one is so bad. Why in the world would we change this thing? And the fabricator tells her, well, actually, they didn't change the font on the circuit board. Not intentionally, anyway. What they changed was a much more fundamental part of Bella's production process, their PCB layout program.

[Andreas Weidner]

So any kind of circuit board and any sort of electronics has to be laid out. You have to, like, place the components and trace where the copper goes between them and how they're connected electrically. And you do this in these software programs, which are PCB layout programs.

[Astrid]

A PCB layout program allows you to make a kind of virtual map of the circuit board you're building. You lay down all the little pieces, you decide where everything's going to go, how everything's going to fit together, and then you have it manufactured. The thing is, not all layout programs use the same font. And apparently Bella's old font, the amazing one that Astrid was in love with, belonged to this very old layout program called Eagle, which as of next year, is no longer going to be in production. It is shutting down. So Astrid's like, well, okay, that's fine. Most fonts are available for download somewhere on the Internet. So theoretically, all I have to do is track down this font from Eagle and then export it to our new layout program.

[Andreas Weidner]

And so I started searching around, and I found on a forum, Eagle is owned by Autodesk now. And I found on their forum this post, which was somebody who's a photographer saying, can I have that font that you use in Eagle? Because I am often doing retouching on product photographs and I can't match the font. I don't know what it is. And somebody at Autodesk replied to him and said, we've literally never had that question before.

[Philippe Kahn]

What?

[Andreas Weidner]

And no, it only exists with an Eagle. And I was like, oh, interesting.

[Astrid]

What Astrid came to realize was that this font she loved so much was actually baked into Eagle's source code. So trying to extract it would be like trying to extract butter from a croissant. Like, you just can't do it. But as far as Astrid was concerned, continuing to use the ugly font on her billboards wasn't really an option either. It's less legible the letters are harder to differentiate. It's fundamentally good for printed circuit boards. So for the past few months, Astrid has been trying to recreate her beloved Eagle font. She's taken screenshots of every character and she's been tracing over them in vectors, which are just like mathematically defined lines, to try and figure out the logic of how everything in this font goes together. And it's through this process of tracing the lines of this font that Astrid has found herself facing the question, or one of the questions that brought her to right into hyperfix, which is essentially, who the hell made this font and what the hell were they thinking?

[Andreas Weidner]

The thing is, is that I keep looking at it because I've gone through it and I'm like working on recreating it. You really have to understand all the angles and all the decisions. You really get up close and personal with it. And the thing that I'm noticing is, like, there is a lot of logic. Like most things are just 90° and 45° angles, which is why a lot of it looks like pretty consistent. But then you have things like this 6. I don't even know what planet that came from. But then it goes back to like this kind of 45 degree thing again.

[Astrid]

Astrid shares her screen with me, and I can immediately see what she loves about this font. It's a monospace font, which means that every character takes up exactly the same amount of space. So it looks very orderly and also very legible. Every character is distinct and clear, which is incredibly important for a font that is going to be shrunk down to the size that it can be printed on a circuit board. But then there are certain characters that look just bonkers. Like this six she's talking about. Yeah, the bottom half of the six looks like 45 degree and 90 degree angles. And then the top looks like a. Looks like the bent finger of someone accusing you of something. I don't know how to describe.

[Andreas Weidner]

That's 45 degrees. I don't know what that is. It doesn't relate to anything else in the faun family. Same with the five. Like, I don't know what. What that is. But then everything else is compliant.

[Astrid]

It's like all the orderly, logical characters are what made Astrid want to recreate it. But the chaotic characters, the ones that are designed unpredictably, they have made this font into a mystery that she can't stop thinking about. So while she was absolutely gushing over the A, which looks a bit like the way my daughter draws a house, the things we ended up discussing most were the things like the sixes.

[Andreas Weidner]

You see what I mean? The thing that I always find interesting about design is that no design decision is accidental, even when the design decisions are bad. There's reasons behind all of this. And so none of this sprang out of the ground. None of it happened by accident. And I have no explanation for it. It does feel like, I don't know, it's sort of like finding a painting at, I don't know, a market or like garage sale or something and going, this person was an absolute genius. Who were they? And it's just like, I don't think I can ever find out.

[Astrid]

So Astrid has a couple goals for us. The first is that she wants to know if she can use her recreation of this font without getting sued. And the second is she wants us to find the creator of this font and find out what's going on here. Why was this font designed as weirdly as it was?

[Andreas Weidner]

I would love that so much. Even just to know who they were. I mean, like, you know, maybe they're not around anymore. I have no idea. But oh my God, yes, I would love that.

[Astrid]

I think that's all my questions. Astrid, this was so much fun. Like I, as a person who doesn't think about this stuff, being forced to think about it, very exciting for me. We all really liked Astrid and the fact that she designed a whole font to fix this problem. She was having felt very hyper fixed, so we were super motivated to help her find the person who created it. But I do have to come clean about something. Even before we spoke to Astrid, we were pretty sure we already found him. So back when Astrid first wrote us, we did a little googling about the problem she submitted. And on the website for Autodesk, which again is the company that owns Eagle, we found a promising looking update from 2017. Whenever a program publishes some new version, they'll also publish some kind of description of the update. It's usually called patch notes or update notes. And almost nobody except big nerds ever read these things. But they can be very helpful for situations like when you lose some functionality or when you're looking for some piece of information about the history of the program, like where a specific font came from. And in this 2017 update we found on the Autodesk website, the developers say that Eagle has adopted a new font. And that new font was created by a guy named Andreas Weidner. This is already a very promising lead. Unfortunately, Andreas Weidner is a shockingly common name in Germany. So after we talk To Astrid. We focus our search on some of the old Eagle forums. And, and lo and behold, there was this one Andreas Widener, who'd authored an insane number of posts, including a 12 part series of essays on the various problems he was having with the Eagle user interface. And so we're like, oh, okay, this is obviously our guy. We find out where he works, we find his email address, and we send him a message asking if he'd be willing to talk to us. And he's like, yeah, okay. So the first thing I wanted to ask you is if you could share your name and your title with me.

[Tony Williams]

The name should already be there.

[Astrid]

Yeah, I just need you to say it for the show. Like, my name is.

[Tony Williams]

Yes, this is Andreas Veidner speaking here.

[Astrid]

What do you do for a living?

[Tony Williams]

I'm doing for a living some electronics engineering, which is one of the reasons.

[Astrid]

Why I was using E. Andreas doesn't just do some electronics engineering. He works at the Albert Einstein Institute in Hanover. And what they do there is literally more complicated than rocket science. Essentially, they're researching all aspects of the general theory of relativity. And Andreas is one of those engineers using Eagle to design the machines that make those experiments possible. So generally speaking, Andreas is a busy guy. But some point around a decade ago, Andreas carved hundreds of hours out of his one and precious life to design Eagle's vector font virtually from scratch.

[Tony Williams]

You can very easily buy a program to design outline fonts, but I did not find any program that enabled one to design vector fonts. So I first had to to program my own vector font editor and this took several hundred hours. And afterwards I could begin designing and do the things on screen. I designed around 1000 characters or something. This was also surely 100 hours or so.

[Astrid]

The funny thing is, it turns out that Eagle already had a vector font. So why did this very busy guy devote so much of his precious time to redesigning a font for a super niche technical program? Did they hire you to do this or was this something you did purely voluntarily?

[Tony Williams]

No, this was just an idea of mine because I just hated that font because it looked so ugly.

[Astrid]

Just like Astrid. Andreas hated the default font that was available to him, but he knew the programmers of Eagle didn't have the capacity to change it. They were too busy.

[Tony Williams]

They were a group of three programmers, and I mean three programmers for such a thing do not have time to create a font. And then I thought, well, why not do this myself?

[Astrid]

Fueled by his hatred for Eagle's default font, Andreas decided to build a font that would better suit his tastes and needs. At the time, he didn't actually know anything about fonts. So as he was tinkering with what this font should look like, he drew inspiration from an old international design standard, the ISO 3098. The ISO 3098 is an old white paper document that offers guidelines for what technical font should look like. It's basically like the elements of style, but for technical fonts. Andreas modified some of the design elements and added a bunch of unique letters to suit the needs of different European countries. And he said he had a blast doing it, especially the work he did on the Georgian Alphabet.

[Tony Williams]

They use wonderfully looking font, very flowing, lots of round things in there. I like that typographically. The only problem is I don't have the slightest idea how it really works. I don't speak the language. I do not have anybody who I can ask about this. So I just used newspaper cuttings to see what could be done. But it was real fun and I like the result, probably only because I have not the slightest idea about the language.

[Astrid]

In this moment, it felt like we'd answered most of Astrid's questions. We knew who made the font and why. And best of all, Andrea said that if Astrid wanted to remake the font, he would not sue her for using it. But there were still some things we didn't totally understand. Like when we tried to nail Andreas down on some weirder design decisions that Astrid had been so fascinated with, he didn't really seem to bite. There are some things about it that seem so unique, like the way that the six angles, like, what made you decide to have such a sharp angle? And like, what were some of the design decisions you made and why you.

[Tony Williams]

Made them for the six? There was no design decision involved because that is as far as I remember, it's exactly the standardized character as designed sometime in the 60s by someone.

[Astrid]

@ the time, I didn't think much of this. I hadn't seen ISO 3098, so I just assumed it must have had weird sixes. I said goodbye to Andreas and he said he would send us the font plus all the materials he used to make it. And I made plans to circle up with Astrid about everything I'd learned. But shortly after my call from Andreas, I got a slack from Hyperfix producer Tony Williams asking me to discuss the files that Andreas had sent him.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Hey, Alex. Okay, so I have a bunch of stuff to catch you up on. This is really embarrassing, but the first thing I need to tell you is that Andreas font It's not Astrid's font.

[Astrid]

Okay, can you send me Andreas's font? I'd like to see what it looks like.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Yeah, give me a sec. Okay. It's in your slack.

[Astrid]

Oh, they are completely different. Andreas's letters are quite round.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Yeah, look at that A. Oh, that.

[Astrid]

That A is. That A is. How would I describe that A? That A is like a tp. It's TP shaped.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Absolutely. It is not that house shaped A that Astrid's in love with at all.

[Astrid]

Okay, so that kind of sucks. So where is Astrid's font?

[Emma Cortlandt]

This is where things get fun again. So do you remember how Andreas told us that when he started working in Eagle, it already had a vector font, but it was like, hideously ugly and so he had to redesign it himself?

[Astrid]

Yeah.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Well, I found that old ugly font. Do you want to see it? I'm going to share screens with you.

[Astrid]

Yeah, go ahead. Is that.

[Emma Cortlandt]

That's Astrid's font.

[Astrid]

So the font that Astrid has been fighting to preserve is the same font that Andreas poured hundreds of man hours into destroying?

[Emma Cortlandt]

Yeah, Nerds, man. They have their opinions and they stick with them and they're vicious about them, I guess.

[Astrid]

Okay, so if the font we're looking for predated the font that Andreas created, then it would stand to reason that it was made by one of the three guys who created Eagle. Right?

[Emma Cortlandt]

That's what I thought too. But then I, like, went back and listened to our conversation with Andreas and I heard this thing that totally blew past me at the time. So Andreas says that the font he hated, it came from this compiler, a specific programming language compiler.

[Tony Williams]

Eagle always had a vector font which was part of their programming language compiler. In the 1990s, I also used exactly the same compiler, therefore I knew where that font came from.

[Astrid]

For the folks at home that aren't programmers like myself, a language compiler is a type of software that is used to translate coding languages like Python or JavaScript or C or whatever into the only language that computers can actually understand. Binary. The old ones and zeros, baby.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Again, this totally blew past me at the time. So I didn't even think to ask what the name of the compiler was. So I reached back out to Andreas and was like, first of all, sorry, dude, it's not actually your font we're looking for. And I was like, hey, you mentioned though, that this old font came from a compiler that you were familiar with. Do you remember the name of that compiler? And he's like, oh, yeah. It comes from this compiler called Turbo Pascal. So as soon as I get that email, I start Googling frantically like, font Eagle, Turbo Pascal, whatever. And I find this old forum thread, and I swear to God, Alex, it's like this thread is the answer to my reporting prayers. Like, the heavens open up, the angels are singing. Everything is incredible. So in this thread, somebody is asking about this font, and someone else says, oh, yeah, I know the font you're talking about. It's called Lit Chr. So I Google lit Chr, and bam, there's Astrid's font.

[Astrid]

Okay, so amazing. Let's go find who made it, right?

[Emma Cortlandt]

So I'm like, okay, the font is called Lit Chr. It comes from Turbo Pascal. So this font was probably created by the person who created Turbo Pascal.

[Astrid]

Hold on a second. Did you. Did you already solve this problem? Because the way you're unspooling the steps here, it feels like you are gearing up to tell me that you solved this problem.

[Emma Cortlandt]

I. I might have.

[Astrid]

What?

[Emma Cortlandt]

Just hold on, hold on, hold on. We're getting ahead of ourselves. I mean, I. Okay, so to be honest, like, I kind of felt like I shit the bed with this Andrea situation. I was so sure we had our dude, and we did not. And I was like, I am absolutely not telling Alex how bad I fudged up until I have something good to report about this. And so then, like, I kind of went down this rabbit hole, one thing led to another, and everything got really insane.

[Astrid]

I can't believe how much work you have put into this without my knowledge. But I'm sorry for interrupting. I want to know the answer, so please go on. I am very excited.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Okay, okay. I'm almost at the end. So I start looking for the dude who developed Turbo Pascal, and it turns out he's like a legend in software engineering. His name is Anders Halsberg, and Turbo Pascal was, like, his first big break. But he's gone on to do a lot of other amazing stuff. Like, he helped write the coding language C, which is one of the most popular programming languages in the world. We've, like, both definitely played games coded in C Alyx. So I'm like, okay, this dude's a big deal. There's no way he's going to get back to me, but whatever, I have to try. So I email this guy, and the very next day, I get a reply.

[Astrid]

Damn.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Okay, don't get excited yet. Anders says he recognizes this font from Turbo Pascal, and he says he's seen it on printed circuit boards, but he has no idea who made it. But he says he thinks it might have ended up in Turbo Pascal because of the software company where he worked at the time, which is called Borland.

[Astrid]

Oh my fucking God. This never ends.

[Emma Cortlandt]

Yeah, I'm going fucking insane at this point, but I tracked down these email addresses for the guys who started Borland and I wrote to all of them and Alex, did you find the guy.

[Astrid]

Who made the font? After the break, the guy who made made the font, we think. I mean, who knows anymore? This could go on forever. This could go on forever.

[Andreas Weidner]

You Must remember this as the podcast.

[Alex Goldman]

Dedicated to stories from the secret and.

[Andreas Weidner]

Forgotten histories of 20th century Hollywood. Stories of sex, murder, institutional racism, bad men, sad women, fascist gossip columnists, and much more. Our new season is called the Old Man Is Still Alive and it's about directors like Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford who got started in the silent era, but we're still making movies in the psychedelic 60s. Follow and listen to youo Must Remember this on the Free Odyssey app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Astrid]

This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Quints. So I know that it's pretty well established at this point that I'm something of a scrub. But aside from getting rid of some huge mutton chop sideburns and ditching a wallet chain, my style hasn't evolved a ton since I was in high school. But as summer approaches, Quints is helping me drag my butt into the 21st century by selling things that I would actually want to wear, like organic cotton silk polos, European linen beach shorts, and comfortable pants that work for everything from backyard hangs to nice dinners. The best part? Everything with a quite quince is priced 50 to 80% less than what you find with similar brands. By working directly with top artisans and cutting out the middleman, Quince gives you luxury pieces without the crazy markups. I got a couple relaxed linen button up shirts from them and I have to admit they look pretty good on me. Now all I have to do is make some friends that might invite me places to show off my new duds instead of just recording this ad in my basement. Kind of sad. Elevate your closet with quince. Go to quince.com hyperfixed for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com hyperfixed to get free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.com hyperfixed this episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Greenlight. So I've been employed pretty much non stop since I was 9 years old. Don't worry I had a paper out. I wasn't like working in a sawmill, but for all the time that I had a job I learned fiscal responsibility like surprisingly late. All I really have to show for that period of my life are way too many Sega Genesis games and a broken Sega Genesis where I could have been Saving or Investing Greenlight is a debit card and money app made for families that help kids learn how to save, invest and spend wisely. Parents can send money to their kids and keep an eye on their kids. Spending and saving kids and teens can build money, confidence and skills in a fun, accessible way like with games. The Greenlight app also includes a chores feature where you can set up one time or recurring chores customized to your household and reward kids with allowance for a job well done. Greenlight is the easy, convenient way for parents to raise financially smart kids and families to navigate life together. Start your risk free Greenlight trial [e-mail] hyperfixed that's greenlight.com hyperfixed to get started. Greenlight.com hyperfixed foreign welcome back to the show. So before the break, Astrid desperately wanted to get her hands on a long lost font. And we found the font and interviewed the guy who made the font. Except it was the wrong guy and the wrong font. And then producer Tony Williams told me an insanely convoluted journey that he took to find this guy right here.

[Philippe Kahn]

I'm impressed with how much research you did. I wish that every podcaster did what you did because you look deep.

[Astrid]

This is Philippe Kahn. Today he runs a company called Full Power AI which uses artificial intelligence for medical science purposes. But way back in the 80s, Philippe was focused on building one of the first graphics programs ever created for computers, which was called the Borland Graphics Interface.

[Philippe Kahn]

We were about a tenth of Microsoft, but yeah, we were. We were the high growth, successful software company of the time. And we were focused on technology that was important to a lot of hobbyists and developers because we were building really good development tools that were helpful to people.

[Astrid]

Using the BGI toolkit built by Phillipe and his colleagues at Borland, people were able to chart scientific data and build games and program spreadsheets. The thing was, they were doing all this graphics stuff on monitors that weren't designed for graphics.

[Philippe Kahn]

One of the important things about displaying things correctly on a screen that was not designed by graphics was to have decent fonts.

[Astrid]

So while Microsoft was building fonts using rinky dink pixel grids, Philippe and his team at Borland decided to take a different approach.

[Philippe Kahn]

This little font that you contacted me for letting that CHR was composed of vector strokes.

[Astrid]

Using vectors instead of pixel grids allowed the Borland team to create fonts that could be easily rotated and resized without.

[Philippe Kahn]

Pixelation, which was really important at the time for games and other systems, or even statistical analysis. So you could label vertical axis, for example.

[Astrid]

The other reason that this was so important was that at the time, there was no graphic consistency between devices. Every machine that came out had a different graphic driver and a different graphic card. So building vector fonts allowed the Borland graphic interface to generate consistent, high quality fonts, regardless of the capabilities of the device that it was running on. So then why, you might be wondering, do so many of the characters look so kooky if these vector fonts were so great, why, for example, does the top half of the six look like a staircase to nowhere? And the answer boils down to two factors, and the first of those factors is speed.

[Philippe Kahn]

A lot of machines had 64k of memory to run everything.

[Astrid]

For comparison, the average font nowadays is about 20 kilobytes. So if you loaded up a modern font on one of these old machines, it'd take up like a third of the memory of the whole computer.

[Philippe Kahn]

We had to be very frugal. If I remember correctly, the file size for that font was probably less than 2,200 or maybe 2,500 bytes, which is very small for a font nowadays. I mean, nobody cares anymore about the size of things. But in 1986, everything was optimized for size and performance.

[Astrid]

Designing smaller, more angular fonts ensured that more processing power would be available for actual computing. But that's not to say that the actual look of the design wasn't important. In fact, some of Astrid's favorite characters in this font were created to serve the very purpose that endeared them to her.

[Philippe Kahn]

I'm going to look like an old timer here, but I'm still upset every time I confuse a 0 with an O, because in a lot of modern fonts, there's not a strikeout in the zero. So I think that the idea was to get rid of my confusion about things, and maybe because I didn't grow up in the United States and I was a undocumented immigrant, as they call it right now. And I was very confused by some of the fonts at the time that didn't clearly differentiate letters, as you notice.

[Astrid]

But for all the thought and personal touches that Philippe put into lit chr, which, by the way, was originally called lit dot. Chr is short for character Philippe was reluctant to call himself its author. Over and over again, he emphasized the collective work of the Borland graphics team and in particular the work of a young designer named Lisa. As far as he could remember, she was the one who sketched out each and every character and really led the charge in figuring out how they should look and be built. So at the end of our call, we asked Philippe to record a message for Astrid and this is what he said.

[Philippe Kahn]

So, Astrid, thank you for asking that question, because the most important thing to me was the fact that it got me to think about those days and what we were doing these days and how we were doing. And when I look back, there was a lady, and I can't remember a last name called Lisa, who was key in developing that font. And we worked together to create something very readable. And it's very exciting that you think that it's still an important font. I agree with you, but I think a lot of the glory needs to go to this designer that's a bit anonymous. Lisa at the time at Borland. And thank you for asking that question. It's so wonderful to rethink about all these experiences.

[Andreas Weidner]

Absolutely warms my heart.

[Astrid]

About six weeks after we first talked with her, we got back to Astrid and she seemed pretty happy with what we turned up.

[Andreas Weidner]

I can't even tell you how wonderful it is to hear these stories from, you know, these, these really early days of computing and software where things were so different and there was so much innovation needed and these people did such brilliant, thankless, anonymous, amazing things. This is the true bedrock of the digital culture that we stand on. And I just really, really admire people like Phillipe and I care about his work so much.

[Astrid]

So we tried to find Lisa. We haven't actually found her, but since speaking with Philippe, we feel more confident than ever that like this font that you love cannot be credited to just one person. Lit.chr was shaped by like a lot of different people. And that's kind of one of those things that feels a little lost in the modern day of creating things on the Internet, especially computer related stuff. Sure, there's plenty of like open source software, but like everything was kind of open source in the early to mid-80s. And it's just like everybody was like borrowing from one another and there was a lot of sharing going on. And so that's how you get a font in Eagle, which was adapted from a font in Turbo Pascal, which was finalized for Borland Graphics Interface, which was created by a team of people who were probably inspired by fonts that existed before that. So by remaking this font, you are just continuing that long tradition.

[Andreas Weidner]

Do I have to ask anybody's permission to release this as an open source font?

[Astrid]

Okay, so to answer this question, we did have to dig a bit. Not only because copyright is an arcane and confusing legal schema, but because at this point, who even knows who owns this font? It was made in the 80s by a company that was bought by another company that was bought by yet another company. But in our research, we found that the law says while you can copyright a font file, you can't copyright the typeface itself. Meaning the recreation of Lit Chr that Astrid has been working on, that's hers. She can do with it whatever she wants.

[Andreas Weidner]

You know, now I have like a conundrum. Alex.

[Astrid]

What? What's that?

[Andreas Weidner]

What do I name it? If I release it, what do I name it?

[Astrid]

I don't know. Lit Chr, formerly known as Little Chr, was adapted into the Borland graphics interface nearly 40 years ago by a team including Philippe Kahn and a designer we only know as Lisa. It was incorporated into a language compiler called Turbo Pascal, and from there it spread far and wide. It was adopted by a printed circuit board design software called Eagle in 1988, then replaced in 2017. It wasn't designed to be beautiful. It was designed to be legible. And it was designed to be small, to take up as little memory as possible so that the computers it was running on could focus on other things. And to a certain type of person, those intentions made it beautiful. Which is why, in 2025, nearly 40 years after it was codified at Borland, it caught the eye of designer Astrid Bin, who decided to recreate the font and give it a new lease on life. And she named it Little Character as a tribute to its lineage and the fact that these characters were built little by little. You can download astrid's [e-mail] or from a link in the show notes. And Lisa, if you're out there and you hear this, we want to talk to you. Please email [e-mail] this episode of Hyperfixed was produced by Tony Williams and Emma Cortlandt. It was edited by Emma Cortlandt, Amor Yates and Sari Safer Sukanek. It was engineered by Tony Williams. The music is by the mysterious Breakmaster Cylinder and me. You can get bonus episodes, join our discord and much [e-mail] join and next week on the premium feed, we'll be talking to Astrid about the time she fabricated a recreation of a fictional instrument from an episode of Star Trek. Which is going to be great. I'm so excited to put that one out. Hyperfixed is a proud member of Radiotopia from prx, a network of independent, creator owned listener supported podcasts. Discover Audio with Vision at Radiotopia fm. Thanks so much for listening Radiotopia.

[Andreas Weidner]

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