The Story of Lucida®

This page was written by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It was previously on the B&H web site, until a site reorganization made it unavailable there. B&H have given TUG permission to post it here, until they can restore it on their own site.

Lucida fonts from B&H - Lucida fonts from TUG.

1984

LUCIDA (seriffed) original designed in three weights: roman, italic, and bold. First shown in a specimen book printed on a 300 dpi laser printer by the Imagen Corporation and distributed at the ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) conference in London, England, September 1984. The Lucida designs were drawn by hand and digitized at the B&H studio using Ikarus software from Peter Karow / URW, running on a VAX 11/730 with a 3.7 MHz processor, 2 MB of RAM, a 450 MB hard disk, and a VAXstation 100 workstation. The first commercial Lucida fonts were produced at Imagen Corporation in Silicon Valley, under the direction of Michael Sheridan, manager of Imagen's type development. Lucida fonts began to ship to Imagen customers in late 1984 and early 1985.

1985

LUCIDA SANS released in three weights: roman, italic, and bold, as sans-serif companions to the original Lucida seriffed fonts. Digitization using the same VAX equipment at B&H. Produced for laser printing and distributed by the Imagen Corporation.

1986

LUCIDA SANS TYPEWRITER original designed in one weight for the Imagen Corporation.

1987

LUCIDA BRIGHT, a modification of original Lucida, made tighter (in fitting) and brighter (more contrast of thick-thin), with semibold weights, for magazine publishing. First used in a re-design of Scientific American magazine by B&H, September 1987. For Scientific American, B&H adds Bold Italics to Lucida Bright and Lucida Sans families, and semibold weights to Lucida Sans family. Fonts produced by B&H for digital typesetting on APS-5 digital typesetting equipment from Autologic. Separately, Lucida Hebrew designed by B&H and released by the Imagen Corporation.

1988

Lucida Math designed and released by Adobe Systems.

1989

LUCIDA SANS, LUCIDA BRIGHT and Lucida Sans Typewriter, including Bold Italics, etc. licensed by Sun Microsystems for digital printing products.

1990

LUCIDA SANS, LUCIDA BRIGHT and Lucida Sans Typewriter, including Bold Italics, etc. released by Sun Microsystems with SunPics NeWSprint and Sparcprinter digital printing products.

1992

LUCIDA CALLIGRAPHY, LUCIDA HANDWRITING, LUCIDA SANS, Lucida Fax, Lucida Blackletter, and Lucida Sans Typewriter, including bold and oblique styles, among the first fonts produced in TrueType digital font format, licensed by Microsoft, included in the Microsoft Font Pack, and later bundled with Microsoft Office products. Lucida Icons, Arrows, and Stars distributed by Microsoft with beta-test version of Windows 3.1. Later purchased by Microsoft, reorganized and renamed Wingdings fonts.

1993

Lucida Sans Unicode, the first TrueType font to combine multiple non-Latin scripts with extended Latin in one font, developed by B&H, released by Microsoft.

1993

Lucida Console, including Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic alphabets, released in a Windows operating system by Microsoft. Lucida New Math fonts, in PostScript Type1 format for TeX systems, developed by B&H in cooperation with Y&Y, Inc., released by Y&Y for mathematical typesetting. Y&Y also distributed Lucida Bright, Lucida Sans, and other Lucida families.

1994

Lucida Sans Greek and Cyrillic released by Sun Microsystems in Solaris OS.

1995

Lucida Sans and other Lucida fonts bundled with UI for Plan 9 from Bell Labs.

1996

Lucida Typewriter released by Adobe.

1999

Lucida Sans Regular with Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, Thai, and Devanagari designed by B&H and released with the Java Developers Kit by Sun Microsystems. Lucida Sans Typewriter with Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic designed by B&H and released with the Java Developers Kit by Sun Microsystems.

2000

Lucida Sans Typewriter Devanagari designed by B&H and released with the Java Developers Kit by Sun Microsystems. Lucida Grande bundled as system font with Macintosh OS X beta release.

2001

LUCIDA GRANDE Regular and Bold with Latin, Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic, and Thai alphabets and extended symbol sets is released by Apple Computer with Macintosh OS X.

2012

Lucida OpenType Math font set released by TUG (TeX Users Group) Lucida Sans Typewriter with Greek, Cyrillic, Hebrew, Arabic designed by B&H and released with the Java Developers Kit by Sun Microsystems.


$Date: 2023/09/22 16:21:07 $;
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