Slightly off-topic, but I've got a copy of Knuth's Computer Modern Typefaces (Book E in the Computers And Typesetting series). I don't think many people get to see this book. You can see where some of Kunth's time went. Here's a quote from the preface:

"Another piece of luck came my way in 1984, when I learned that the original bronze patterns used to make the molds of Monotype 8A were in San Francisco. For years I had been working with indirect and imprecise information about the fonts that had stimulated this work. First I had worked from photographic blowups of letterpress original pages from The Art of Computer Programming; then Richard Southall had prepared enlargements from original proofs he had located in England. At last I found the actual 80-year-old patterns that had generated the metal type. The present owner of these patters, Mr. Othmar Peters, kindly consented to let me borrow them while I was preparing the final draft of Computer Modern, and I learned much by measuring them with calipers."