Alois Auer Develops Typefaces for 500 European Dialects and 150 Languages at the Austrian State Printing House

In 1841 printer, inventor, botanical illustrator and linguist Alois Auer was appointed direct of the printing office of the k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei, the Austrian state printing facility in Vienna. During his directorship through 1868 Auer expanded this very large printing house very significantly and made its productions some of the greatest in the world. He also promoted the printing facility by issuing a series of books about the printing house itself.

One of Auer's most significant contributions was a "typometrical system," standardizing the sizes of the large number of foreign alphabets that he had ordered cast. This he described and illustrated in Der polygraphische Apparat oder die verschieden Kunstfächer der k. k. Hof- und Staatsdruckerei zu Wien (1853). The German edition of this work was illustrated with 28 plates illustrating a wide variety of reproduction methods. Auer also issued the same work in English as The Polygraphic Apparatus, or the Different Departments of Art Carried on in the Imperial Court and Government Printing-Office at Vienna (1853). The translation included only the text. In these lectures Auer listed the nearly 150 languages for which he had type cast for his establishment, and also the very wide variety of printing techniques undertaken at his facility,