The font that carved its way through 20th-century America

The hardest working font in Manhattan (2025)

In 2007, Marcin Wichary photographed the fonts he was supposed to love in New York City. Years later, he became obsessed with a font he hadn't noticed then—Gorton, a monoline sans-serif used on everything from computer keyboards to Apollo spacecraft. This article chronicles his discovery of Gorton's origins in George Gorton Machine Co.'s pantograph engravers, its surprising ubiquity, and the reasons behind its century-long dominance.