who discovered the serif?

Question

how has it developed through out the centuries?

Answer 1

click here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Origins_.26_etymology

Answer 2

A serif is a flare at the end of a letter terminal. Serifs first appeared in Ancient Rome, around the end of the Republican era.

It is believed that Roman letterers would paint their letters with a brush onto stone before they would be cut. (Whether the letter-painter and the stone cutter were the same person has also been an object of dispute. But painted letters on stone walls were everywhere in the empire, as the ruins of Pompeii attest.) When one paints a letter with a brush, serif like flares occur naturally when pressure is applied at the end of the stroke. It is probably there from that the serif was born—the cut letter kept the form of the letter that had been set out by the brush.

Another reason for the serif’s preservation in the stone-cutting process was the type of marble that the Romans were using in the first place. During the late Republican era, the Romans discovered a new marble quarry, which contained much harder stone than had been previously used. This marble held fine details phenomenally—so well, in fact, that we can still see them accurately 2,000 years later.

Answer 3

I think you'll find it was discovered by someone called San

That's why you can get San's Serif

;-)

Answer 4

Serifs are thought to have originated in the Roman alphabet with inscriptional lettering—words carved into stone in Roman antiquity. The explanation proposed by Father Edward Catich in his 1968 book The Origin of the Serif is now broadly but not universally accepted: the Roman letter outlines were first brushed onto stone, and the stone carvers followed the brush marks which flaired at stroke ends and corners, creating serifs.

The origin of the word "serif" is obscure, but apparently almost as recent as the type style. The oldest citations in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) are 1841 for "sans serif", given as sanserif, and 1830 for "serif". The OED speculates that "serif" was a back-formation from "sanserif". Webster's Third New International Dictionary traces "serif" to the Dutch schreef, meaning wrote, and ultimately through Dutch schrijven, German schreiben and Latin scribere, all meaning "to write". Schreef now also means "serif" in Dutch.
Serif fonts can be broadly classified into one of four subgroups: old style, transitional, slab serif, or modern.

The Garamond typeface, an example of an old-style serif
[edit] Old Style
Old style typefaces date back to 1465, and are characterized by a diagonal stress (the thinnest parts of letters are at an angle rather than at the top and bottom), subtle differences between thick and thin lines (low line contrast), and excellent readability. Old style typefaces are reminiscent of the humanist calligraphy from which their forms were derived.

It has been said that the angled stressing of old style faces generates diagonal lock, which, when combined with their bracket serifs creates detailed, positive word-pictures (see bouma) for ease of reading. However, this theory is mostly contradicted by the parallel letterwise recognition model, which is widely accepted by cognitive psychologists who study reading.

Old style faces are sub-divided into Venetian and Aldine or Garalde. Examples of old style typefaces include Jenson (Venetian), Garamond, Bembo, Goudy Old Style, and Palatino (all Aldine or Garalde).

The Times New Roman typeface, an example of a transitional serif
[edit] Transitional
Transitional (or "baroque") serif typefaces first appeared in the mid-18th century. They are among the most common, including such widespread typefaces as Times Roman (1932) and Baskerville (1757). They are in between modern and old style, thus the name "transitional." Differences between thick and thin lines are more pronounced than they are in old style, but they are still less dramatic than they are in modern serif fonts.

The Rockwell typeface, an example of a slab serif
[edit] Slab Serif
Main article: Slab serif
Slab serif (a.k.a. "Egyptian") typefaces usually have little if any contrast between thick and thin lines. Serifs tend to be as thick as the vertical lines themselves and usually have no bracket. Slab serif fonts have a bold, rectangular appearance and sometimes have fixed widths, meaning that all characters occupy the same amount of horizontal space (as in a typewriter). They are sometimes described as sans-serif fonts with serifs because the underlying character shapes are often similar to sans serif typefaces, with less variation between thin and thick shapes on the character. (A subcategory of slab serif is the Clarendon typefaces, which do have small but significant brackets, and structures more similar to seriffed typefaces.) Slab serif typefaces date to around 1800. Examples of slab serif typefaces include Clarendon, Rockwell and Courier.

The Bodoni typeface, an example of a modern serif
[edit] Modern
Modern serif typefaces, which first emerged in the late 18th century, are characterized by extreme contrast between thick and thin lines. Modern typefaces have a vertical stress, long and fine serifs, with minimal brackets. Serifs tend to be very thin and vertical lines are very heavy. Most modern fonts are less readable than transitional or old style serif typefaces. Common examples include Bodoni, Century Schoolbook and Computer Modern (the font family that comes with the TeX and LaTeX open-source computer typography systems).

Answer 5

just watch the history channel or go to historychannel websites

Answer 6

Have you got a font obsession or something?

Do your own homework!