It's almost the longest day of the year! We hope you're soaking in the extra daylight going into the weekend!
Coincidentally, we were talking about some of our state registers this week. These small books contain lists of attornies and other legal professionals in the state, and they also often include almanacs. These are two earlier Connecticut registers (1789 and 1808), and we've highlighted the June pages, which include the daylight hours and weather predictions around the time of the summer solstice. It's also fun to see the names of the time (Philo Ruggles might be hard to beat, but let us know your favorite!).
TITLE: Grays Sports Almanac: Complete Sports Statistics, 1950-2000
AUTHOR: Compiled by Grays, the authority since 1923
ORIGIN: Back to the Future II (movie, 1989, story and directed by Robert Zemeckis, and story and screenplay by Bob Gale)
Back cover copy: Your source for all sports facts! In-depth coverage of all major sporting events from 1950 to the year 2000, including football, baseball, hockey, golf, tennis, horseracing, slamball, track, polo, bowling, surfing, boxing, sailing, autoracing, rugby, soccer, pingpong, darts, swimming, diving, ice skating, racquetball, rodeo, and more. Crammed with facts, figures, records and statistics, this authoritative book gives you all the information you need to know, all in the space of maybe 150 pages or so!
I. Reference — Almanacs — Sports
II. Temporal anomalies — Alternate timelines (bad) — Causes
III. Plot triggers — Forbidden knowledge — The wrong hands
Note: This specific copy of Grays Sports Almanac was purchased by a time-traveling Marty McFly in the future year of 2015. After Doc Brown disposed of it, warning of the dangers of bringing such information back to the past, it was retrieved by an elderly Biff Tannen, who stole Brown's time machine and delivered the almanac to his younger self in 1955, creating an alternate timeline where Biff owned a sleazy business empire. Surprisingly, Mr. Tannen allowed us to borrow the almanac for our collection, for which... wait, this is just the dust jacket, covering an issue of the French nudie magazine Oh Là Là! Why does a paperback even have a dustjacket?
I. Periodicals — Nudie magazines — French
II. Erotica — Pinups — Boobs
III. Plot obstacles — Distractions — Red herrings
Both of these are original props made for the movie, though it's not definite that either were actually used on screen. The images came from a lot sold at auction via Prop Store Auctions in 2023. And it genuinely just showed some topless ladies in a PG-rated movie, huh? The '80s, man. A different time.
Women's Almanac (wim' inz ôl' mə-næk'), n. [Armitage Press, Inc.], 1. a guide to local women's agencies, consumer hotlines, child care agencies, legal assistance, counseling and crisis centers, and many more services and resources. 2. a compendium of articles on women and cosmetics, day care, bank accounts & credit, employment, volunteerism, and more. 3. an answer magazine for women.
The Browne Popular Culture Library (BPCL), founded in 1969, is the most comprehensive archive of its kind in the United States. Our focus and mission is to acquire and preserve research materials on American Popular Culture (post 1876) for curricular and research use. Visit our website at https://www.bgsu.edu/library/pcl.html.
On this final #Typography Tuesday of 2021, as we transition from December of one year to January of another, we present those two months as typographically represented in The Bauer Almanac for 1939, published in New York by the German Bauer Type Foundry (Bauersche Giesserei). It was printed in Elizabeth Roman and Italic types designed by the noted German designer Elizabeth Friedländer and released by Bauer in 1938. The woodcuts are by Karl Vollmer who had been a student of the German grand-master designer Rudolf Koch. Friedländer herself had been a student of the German artist and type designer Emil Rudolf Weiss, who designed Bauer’s noted Weiss family of typefaces starting in 1927.
Bauer’s owner Georg Hartmann, who had opened the New York office in 1927, commissioned Friedländer to design her typeface, which was originally named Friedländer-Antiqua, but had to be renamed Elizabeth, since Friedländer, a recognizably Jewish name, was inadvisable after Hitler came to power in 1933. The Bauer firm, the stock of which is still directed by Georg Hartmann’s great-granddaughter Vivian Harmann, was originally established by type designer and punchcutter Johann Christian Bauer in 1837 at Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Today the range of Bauer typefaces is extensive and notable. The Frankfurt headquarters itself is long closed, but Bauer still has a presence in the Barcelona company Fundición Tipográfica Neufville which holds the rights to Bauer typefaces that Vivian Hartmann manages as Neufville Digital.
View other posts on typefaces by Elizabeth Friedländer.
