1960s Technical Diagrams fonts used by NASA

Question

It's 1960, and technical diagrams are of top design quality, despite the limited technical means available at the time.

Which font would likely be used for the main text in such a diagram?

I understand that the titles often use Futura, but what about the main text?

It appears to be a variation of IBM Selectric's Letter Gothic, but I'm not certain.

Can someone direct me to a downloadable font that could replicate this?

You can get Letter Gothic from Adobe fonts. It's not a perfect match. The numeral 1 is different. Also have a look on google fonts, you can set the filter for monospace fonts and find something similar perhaps. — Billy Kerr, Oct 13 at 15:11
Is this a duplicate of graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/24978/… — joojaa, Oct 13 at 15:36
Does this answer your question? 1960s technical charts sans-serif all caps font — Andrew Leach, Oct 13 at 18:07
I found the other post after this one, but I do think that I have already seen that one before in the past. It is my understanding that the other post is asking for the font used in the titles (FUTURA) while I was looking for the text used as body font. The other post however shows the guidelines in terms of fonts used at NASA for technical reports, and it seems that both DIRECTORY and ALTERNATE GOTHIC fonts are the ones I am looking for. I found a similar font to ALTERNATE GOTHIC but it is too bold, only suitable for small titles in charts. The DIRECTORY font seems to be a mistery. — M.E., Oct 14 at 13:02

tonyrocket5 · Accepted Answer · 2023-10-13 19:45:51Z

1

I used the "What the Font?" app from MyFonts.

answered Oct 13 at 19:45

tonyrocket5

262 bronze badges

It seems pretty similar
– M.E.
Oct 14 at 13:05
Similar but not identical. Again the numeral 1 is different.
– Billy Kerr
Oct 14 at 17:07

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