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While working on a spring sabbatical from high school in April and May of 1971, I worked in the computer department of the National Institutes of Health in Maryland.
I was assigned to work on the PDP-6 and PDP-10 with several people, including Dr Bob Sproull.
They had a Calcomp Film Plotter which used an electron beam to draw on film, thus allowing high resolution output, e.g. for publishing.
Bob asked me to investigate ways to make zoom-able fonts, which could also be distorted into a sort of italic, etc.
I studied the problem for a week or so, and concluded the best way to do this was a combination of straight lines and splines. I developed a list structure to store fonts. As examples, I did the letters "I" (of course) and "P" (just to prove the point).
This idea worked very well, and I gave a demo on the PDP-6's vector display system, set into raster mode. The characters could be scaled and slanted to "italic" quite easily, and could be shown as outlines or as filled characters.
(I also did a simple fighting video game on the display, "Germs" of course)
I then went off to MIT for ten years.
Fast forward to MacWorld, January 1989. I had taken a job at a Silicon Valley company doing Mac storage and video products, and was invited to a breakfast with John Warnock.
During breakfast, I mentioned to him that I was the originator of the spline-based font system. He looked shocked, and distinctly nervous! Apparently, he and Bob Sproull were associates, and he was afraid I was going to make claims or something!
I laughed, and put his mind to rest: "John, don't worry. I had an idea 18 years ago, and you and Adobe did all the real work". He laughed and relaxed a bit, but I'll never forget the expression on his face!
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