wght
Weight
Weight is the width of the glow along each lit cathode. The cell stays put; the wires move in by half a stroke as it grows.
Light → Bold
NYSE 797 UP 1/8
Free · OFL · 0.100
ANOKATH
A fourteen-segment display face after the Burroughs B-7971 neon tube of the stock-ticker boards. Capitals, figures and an unlit wire cage. Free under the OFL.
Free for any use, commercial included, under the SIL Open Font License. The download holds OTF, TTF, a variable TTF and WOFF2.
GM 84-1/2
GM 84-1/2
About
The B-7971 was a mid-1960s neon tube best known from Ultronic Letrascan stock tickers: fourteen wire cathodes on one plane, with a single wire across the top and another across the bottom. Those single wires are what set it apart from a sixteen-segment display.
The segment set of every letter and figure is read off photographs of the tube lit, and so are the proportions. The figures follow the tube, which reaches for diagonals more than a modern display would: 7 is the top bar and one diagonal right across.
An outline font can't draw light, so a lit cathode is a flat stroke the width of the glow. Two lit wires meeting at a node read as one stroke with a square corner, as they do on the tube.
Anokath Nixie Color
Every character lit in a tube of its own.
Download free
Free under the same SIL Open Font License. One TTF a zip, about 9 MB each: the tube pictures are most of it.
A color cut of Anokath: each character is a picture of a B-7971 lit, with its glass, its wire cage, the burned ceramic behind it and the pins below. No two tubes are bent or worn alike, and each weight's tubes carry that weight's wires.
Every character is a whole tube, so the font is set wide, a space is a dark tube and the pins hang below the baseline. Set lines to the font's own height and the tubes stand on one another.
The pictures are in an OpenType SVG table. Firefox, Safari, Adobe's apps and Typst draw them; Chrome and most other apps show Anokath's plain outlines instead, which is why this page shows a picture.
Type tester
ANOKATH 7971 UP 1/8 NYSE
OpenType
Variable axes
OpenType
ss01
Unlit
Each character has an unlit twin: the wires it leaves dark, drawn at bare-wire width. Set a line twice in the same place, once plain and once with Unlit, and the cathode cage shows behind the glow.
XON 61 <54>
Lit
XON 61 <54>
Unlit
XON 61 <54>
Weights
LIGHT 300
REGULAR 400
MEDIUM 500
BOLD 700
In use
Ticker
A stock quote, Regular.
GM 84-1/2
Panel
A status line, Bold.
T=2*Q
Label
Small caps-height text, Light.
CHANNEL <7> READY
Specimens
Glyph grid
Every mapped character in 0.100.
Loading outlines…
- Name
- —
- Code point
- U+0041
- Advance
- —
Basic Latin 45
Specifications
- Version
- 0.100
- Glyphs
- 92
- Formats
- OTF, TTF, Variable TTF, WOFF2
- Variable axes
- Weight
- Scripts
- Latin capitals and figures
- OpenType
- Unlit
- Licenses
- SIL Open Font License 1.1 (free)
License
Free, under the SIL Open Font License.
Use Anokath in print, on the web, in apps and in logos, for personal or commercial work, at no charge. You may share and bundle the fonts; you may not sell them on their own. The full terms are in OFL.txt inside the download and at openfontlicense.org. The Cast Iron Type EULA on the license page covers the paid faces only.