> On Tue, 15 Nov 2005, Bob Foxworth wrote:
>
> > > Well, Mr. Akio Morita - the founder of Sony - wrote that he wanted
to
> > > name the company with a variation of Sonus (the latin word for
sound)
> > > and picked sonny. Later, he found that the word had an english
meaning,
> > > so he dropped one of the 'n's.
> > >
> > > From http://www.nndb.com/people/384/000094102/
> > >
> > > "With Masaru Ibuka he co-founded Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo K.K. in 1946,
> > > which changed name to Sony (derived from the Latin word for
"sound") in
> > > 1958. In order to enhance international sales, at this time the
company
> > > took the unprecedented move to spell its name in Katakana, the
alphabet
> > > used in Japan to transliterate foreign words"
> >
> > Obscure trivia dept:
> >
> > When you look atr a Sony product and carefully
> > examine the four letters that make up the name,
> > you can see that the first two "SO" are not exactly
> > the same height as the "NY" The difference is
> > only a few percent. Without having an example
> > handy (doing this from memory) I think the "SO"
> > are the taller letters.
> >
> > I don't know why. Perhaps it is related to the
> > katakana explanation as each syllable could be
> > in theory rendered by a character. Maybe it was
> > a way to trap unwary counterfeiters, with less
> > attention to detail than they should have.
>
> Maybe it's a characteristic of typography -- "S" and "O" are curved on
top,
> "N" and "Y" are pointed. Occam's Razor and all that... Check out
"C", "D",
> "G", "Q" etc. vs. "A", "H", "J" (if it has no bar in that font), "K",
etc.
> in your favorite font at high resolution (screen and inkjet aren't
high
> resolution).
>
> --
> -eben
I am not talking about the output of printers, etc. That
is a non-issue. At the risk of getting way off topic...
When a company creates a logo, which is what I
referred to, they can doctor the appearance of letters
however they like.
Curved and square tops of letters are not the issue,
though they can create illusions of size, such as the
famous illusion of equal vertical lines with outward-
and inward- pointing arrows, which appear to be
different line heights. In fact every upper case letter
occupies a "box" which exactly contains the outermost
extensions of the font shape and ideally every
character will occupy that same vertical box. (ignore
descenders on LC letters for this) though not in every
direction, i.e. a M may fill the box, an O will touch
the edges of the same box but an I will not touch every
edge but will not exceed the box height. u.s.w.
In this case I took the time to look up the logotype
made of cast metal on the front of a RCD-W500C
Sony device. With a dial caliper I measured the
height of the cast metal "S O" letters as 0.207
inch, each, and the height of the "N Y" letters as 0.187
inch, each, and these are at the widest vertical
projections of each of those letters. (the "box"
height").
In addition if you look slantwise across the letter tops
you can see this effect. I think you would find this
to be the case on any Sony device, Proof is left
as an exercise for the reader.
My question is, why did they do this. (No it is
not important) but I wanted to correct an apparent
misunderstanding of exactly what I said.
- Bob 1032 est
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