Abstract/Summary

A study of the ‘Plaque Découpée Universelle’, a lettering device invented in the United States in 1876 and exhibited and sold in Paris at the 1878 Exposition Universelle and elsewhere. The device and associated promotional items are shown and the concepts underlying its geometric sanserif characters explored through patent documents and promotional texts. The invention is then broadly situated relative to contemporary French education and culture, and to early twentieth-century experiments in letterform design.