H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright typographic mystery | Hacker News Reader

H-Bomb: A Frank Lloyd Wright typographic mystery

inconspicuous.info

153 pointsmrngm38 comments

I will admit I lost interest after it was revealed that the letters had been replaced several times and that the original was most likely correct. "frank lloyd wright messed up the orientation of an H" has a bit of interest to it; "some random later person messed it up" has none.

A long and venerable litany of spaceflight disasters would beg to differ:

- Apollo "Little Joe" A-003 (May 19, 1965): A roll gyro - Proton-M Launch Failure (July 2, 2013): Yaw sensors - Genesis Space Probe (2001): Accelerometer

Getting things the right way round is very important.

agreed, but "these letters have been taken down and put back up several times and along the way the H and S weren't always put the right way up" is a complete story. just let the place know and they can fix it. the details of when each letter was messed up by whatever random person are of little interest.

Im curious if the mounting points for the letters had 180deg rotational symmetry. If they didn’t (such as a mount point on the crossbar in the H), that’d go a long way to explaining “correctness”.

The second image in the article clearly shows screw holes in the letters. The H appears to be perfectly symmetric for 180 degree mounting.

Not sure why the comments here are so negative! I found it mildly interesting, and worth a few minutes on a Sunday!

I was initially interested but after skimming through I questioned if this pedantic detective tale needed to be told…

Just send an email to the board of trustees / body corporate and move on.

Please don't. We'll spend $500,000 tracking down what happened.

Nobody speaks about the way larger spacing between "AND THE" in comparison to the other spaces...

I don't understand why the author is intent on pinning the ever changing orientation of the letters on architects. Wright's intent would have been in the architectural drawings. Everything after that, including the original installation, would be the responsibility of the person who installed the lettering. I've seen much more obvious errors (e.g. spelling errors) occur during the installation of similar signage ... things that would not have made it to the final architectural drawings.

For the love of all this is holy, do not read this article. If the internet has taught has anything, it's that you cannot unsee an image - I predict you will not be able to unsee upside-down H's (and even an S) post-reading. Save yourself.

If you ever want to watch a movie again, do NOT work on codecs. Just saying.

Ugh, I can only imagine. I was just looking at some color banding on a 4k TV and I was like “seriously??” I know it could be much worse.

ob. XKCD:

https://xkcd.com/1015/

It reminded me of PG wodehouse's characters who would study newts. The British Gentry had nothing better to do with their time

if you don't know what Wilhelm scream is, DO NOT RESEARCH

man some grouchy people. I enjoyed the thoroughness and tenacity the author had for such an insignificant thing. While inconclusive if FLW goofed it doesn't matter, it's still kinda interesting to see how often the letters flipped around.

The typeface that is used there is not something typical, and it's very top-heavy in letters like P and R. The top-heavy H (called "upside-down" in the article) does not seem too odd in this context. F on the other hand is almost "normal".

part2: https://www.inconspicuous.info/p/the-man-behind-the-upside-d...

That is hidden behind a paywall. The curious part of me wants to know what the guy said, but the logical part of me knows it was likely little more than “oops”.

Given that there had been wrongly installed letters continuously since at least 1956 and we have no proof that an entirely "correct" version ever existed, I'd consider the inverted H historically accurate and I hope it won't ever get fixed and especially not as an overreaction to the article.

Given that the original drawings did show all letters in the orientation that's obviously correct for the font, I'd be hesitant to say the upside-down installations were ever historically accurate. It most certainly wasn't FLW's vision.

And this where we disagree. The original drawings show the artists original supposed intention but what counts for historical accuracy is how the work was perceived for the majority of its existence.

Which, as the article and other comments here make clear, has been changing back and forth over the decades.

In a situation like that, I think you kind of have to acknowledge the original drawings as the preferred state for things. Especially when just about anyone with training in this area would readily agree that that design aligns with what they'd all consider usual or correct.

Sure, it has been changing back and forth which makes the pristine version the least historically correct because few, if any at all, ever experienced that.

I was more bothered by the extraneous word spacing on the second line, between “and” and “the.” Is it just me?

I noticed that but I guess it's to avoid the vertical river.

I'll bite. What's a vertical river?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_(typography)

I don't understand the use of "I'll bite" when the message you're answering to is obviously not... bait. Are we now saying "I'll bite" before every question we ask?

All this because some guys installed the letters wrong?

Is this some kind of joke, or is the author really lost in some conspiracy-level detail tracking, hunting for "hidden signals"?

I think you need to touch some grass if you don't know the difference between curiosity (searching for the answer and evidence) and conspiracy (inventing answer out of nothing and ignoring the evidence)

ppl with this sort of mania should be allowed to collect disability and stay home

1) it's called a hobby

2) it's called research and there are whole ministries dedicated to answering random questions like this one

I would not be surprised if the manufactured letters and their installation was based on hand hand drawn letters.

That it is not aesthetically obvious, suggests it was drawn that way and not a mistake. Good typography is subtle and bespoke typography even more so.

The article makes clear that the orientation of the lettering has changed over time, which counts against the idea that what it is now necessarily reflects the original intent.

Fair enough.

To me the evidence in the article still suggests that “hard correctness” is probably not historically appropriate…hand lettering is not a typeface.

That’s really where I am coming from — the perspective of historical architecture, historical architectural practice, and historical methods of delivering buildings.

In particular, today’s mythological Wright is not the 1908’s historical Wright on a commercial jobsite. And the contractual relationships of a 1908 construction project were not delineated like current construction projects.

And yet the article shows the original sketches Wright made for the building that show the asymmetrical H's with the bars aligned with the bars on the E's (i.e on the upper half) in virtually identical font to what was eventually installed.

I don't really see how you can come away with the conclusion that this suggests lack of intent; at most, it seems like you had already formed the opinion that there was no intent, and you didn't find the evidence to the contrary convincing enough that you were wrong. I don't think your take is necessarily wrong, but I don't think it's fair to characterize the evidence as suggesting what you're saying.

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