Font character counts

Eris Alar

I've been looking over some type specimens from the 1930s, particularly ATF ones, and it seems the fonts had very few characters, with no accents. Is this true, or is there a piece of the puzzle I'm missing? How did they typeset for other languages, or names that use accents etc?

James Puckett

Most old type specimens were catalogs distributed only within one nation. So they generally only showed letters needed for setting type in the local language, and did not include anything needed for typesetting math, financial data, annotations, etc.. If a typesetter came to a and accent and didn’t have it, he just used the unaccented letter. The larger ATF (1912 and 1923), Linotype (~1939), and Intertype (~1925) specimens do have collections of accented letters, fractions, superior/inferior figures, and various symbols tucked away in the back of the book.