Editor’s note:

I recently wrote an article about the font on my Ricoh pocket watch being based on the handwriting of Thomas Jefferson. In comments to the article, my GMT+9 colleague Tempus Fugitive (Jim) asked for more information about the font. Part of our goal at GMT+9 is to raise awareness of design elements in Japanese watches beyond their sizes, the materials their crystals are made out of, and similar features. Because some readers may have missed the interesting material that developed in the exchange, we’re presenting it here with hopes that the mystery of the Jefferson font will soon be resolved. Enjoy!

Jim: You’ve drawn some fascinating connections in this article, Bryan, and I would love to learn more about the Thomas Jefferson font. Was the Jefferson font developed by others and picked up by Ricoh, perhaps unwittingly, or did they really have a Jefferson connection in mind when they designed their pocket watch?

Bryan: I found out the font on my Ricoh pocket watch is the “Jefferson” font by using online font identification software tools. I’m not a professional typesetter, but think Identifont is pretty good and it identified the font after going through a series of more than 20 steps.

Just as there are tens of fonts known as “Garamond,” and many look quite different from one another, there are many versions of fonts called “Jefferson.” One that looks similar to the font on my pocket watch is called National Archive, for instance. That font is an almost an exact match of Jefferson’s hand writing. Fonts inspired by Jefferson’s handwriting on the Declaration of Independence are still being produced. A font designer named Genady Fridman from Russia designed a font in 2005 known as Jefferson, owned by ParaType, that closely matches the writing on my Ricoh pocket watch.

Let’s look more carefully at Garamond, the Declaration of Independence, Levis 501 jeans, and the invention of the wristwatch.

Many think modern fonts known as Garamond were really designed by Jean Jannon (1580–1635 or 1658); that merchant and brewer Timothy Matlack’s (1736-1829, pictured below) hand penned the ink on the US Declaration of Independence; that denim blue jeans were invented prior to Strauss; as was the wristwatch before Patek Philippe. Sorry Virginia, there is no Santa Claus.

My guess is Ricoh designers had Jefferson’s handwriting in mind when they designed the dial on my pocket watch, but it’s only a guess. You’d have to ask Ricoh to get a definitive answer. I’d wager nobody there now knows the answer and that the institutional memory regarding this little treasure has been lost. After all, this is hardly a famous watch and was probably made almost 25 years ago.

Jim: I spoke to a friend of mine, who is an expert on American constitutional history, about your article Bryan, and he echoed your interesting question. Did Jefferson’s handwriting actually appear on the Declaration of Independence or was it the work of a professional penman, also known as an “engrosser” in colonial times. In 1937, on the 150th anniversary of the U.S. constitution, an archival investigation revealed that an Assisant Clerk to the Pennsylvania General Assembly, Jacob Shallus (1750-1796), was paid $30 to “transcribe & engross” the final draft of the constitution, and his engrossed copy now hangs in the National Archives. So Engrossers were commonly employed to draft official documents in the day.

Some further digging in Wikipedia reveals the following information about the Declaration of Independence.

On July 19 Congress ordered a copy be “engrossed” (hand written in fair script on parchment by an expert penman) for the delegates to sign. This engrossed copy was produced by Timothy Matlack, assistant to the secretary of Congress. Most of the delegates signed it on August 2, 1776, in geographic order of their colonies from north to south, though some delegates were not present and had to sign later. Two delegates never signed at all. As new delegates joined the congress, they were also allowed to sign. A total of 56 delegates eventually signed.

This engrossed copy is now on display at the National Archives, and is, I assume, the one shown above in your article.

However, the story does not end there, because Jefferson did write earlier drafts of the declaration in his own hand, and it’s not clear that the “original Rough draught” (or other documents) weren’t the basis for the Jefferson font. Here’s the fuller chronology from the National Archives website:

Drafting the Documents

Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia behind a veil of Congressionally imposed secrecy in June 1776 for a country wracked by military and political uncertainties. In anticipation of a vote for independence, the Continental Congress on June 11 appointed Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert R. Livingston as a committee to draft a declaration of independence. The committee then delegated Thomas Jefferson to undertake the task. Jefferson worked diligently in private for days to compose a document. Proof of the arduous nature of the work can be seen in the fragment of the first known composition draft of the declaration, which is on public display here for the first time.

Jefferson then made a clean or “fair” copy of the composition declaration, which became the foundation of the document, labeled by Jefferson as the “original Rough draught.” Revised first by Adams, then by Franklin, and then by the full committee, a total of forty-seven alterations including the insertion of three complete paragraphs was made on the text before it was presented to Congress on June 28. After voting for independence on July 2, the Congress then continued to refine the document, making thirty-nine additional revisions to the committee draft before its final adoption on the morning of July 4. The “original Rough draught” embodies the multiplicity of corrections, additions and deletions that were made at each step. Although most of the alterations are in Jefferson’s handwriting (Jefferson later indicated the changes he believed to have been made by Adams and Franklin), quite naturally he opposed many of the changes made to his document.

Congress then ordered the Declaration of Independence printed and late on July 4, John Dunlap, a Philadelphia printer, produced the first printed text of the Declaration of Independence, now known as the “Dunlap Broadside.” The next day John Hancock, the president of the Continental Congress, began dispatching copies of the Declaration to America’s political and military leaders. On July 9, George Washington ordered that his personal copy of the “Dunlap Broadside,” sent to him by John Hancock on July 6, be read to the assembled American army at New York. In 1783 at the war’s end, General Washington brought his copy of the broadside home to Mount Vernon. This remarkable document, which has come down to us only partially intact, is accompanied in this exhibit by a complete “Dunlap Broadside” — one of only twenty-four known to exist.

On July 19, Congress ordered the production of an engrossed (officially inscribed) copy of the Declaration of Independence, which attending members of the Continental Congress, including some who had not voted for its adoption, began to sign on August 2, 1776. This document is on permanent display at the National Archives.

Here is a surviving fragment from Jefferson’s original rough draft, in his own handwriting:

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 22nd, 2007 at 1:21 pm and is filed under Ricoh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.