IBM Selectric Composer Font(s)? 1975

Question

I am hoping to identify this font, used in a volume of avant-garde poetry from 1975. My research indicates that the book was typeset on an IBM Selectric Composer, although other candidates would be a Compugraphic or an AM Varityper phototypesetter.

I am most interested in the roman font, but I would be pleased to identify the italic font as well. To my untrained eye, the roman looks like a close match to IBM's "Classified News" font, which was available for the Composer, as pictured here: https://typecast.munk.org/2015/06/09/classified-news-composer-ball-cn-x-x-and-a-large-elite-72/. But the 1 character of this sample of Classified News has a bottom serif, while the 1 in my book does not. Wikipedia lists fonts for the Composer here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Selectric#Selectric_Composer. Could Univers be another possibility?

I picked this sample image since it contains roman, italic, and numerals, but the book is quite text-heavy and I can provide additional images if helpful for ID'ing.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Here’s a IBM Selectric Composer type catalog from 1970. Your sample may very well be a mix of faces.

 

Univers does align with the numerals and other sans serif copy in the sample you posted.

Comments

Agree with Kevin that this is IBM’s Univers. Here’s a 1966 specimen.

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Thank you both for the quick replies, and for the link to the IBM catalog—that's very helpful!

 

Just to confirm, here is one more text sample, which includes the word "Universe." Does this seem be to a certain match for IBM's Univers?

 

It makes sense that the typesetters would have swapped in the typeball for Press Roman (identifed by another answer below) as needed for italics.

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Yes, still Univers.

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Yes, I think it’s safe to say this is their Univers for the Selectric. Given the extremely narrow ‘s’ the best style match is 10 pt Univers Bold (just appearing thinner due to print). Here’s a high res closeup of a specimen I have here at home.

 

Answer 2

The italic is from Press Roman, essentially IBM’s version of Times.

Comments

I've taken a look and you are very right! Thank you!