An essay by historian Alice Savoie: a study of the apparition, uses and facets of monospaced letterforms from the Greek Antiquity to early programming ages. Savoie surveys both the technical and aesthetical aspects of fixed-width design through stoichedon, typewriter typefaces, optical character recognition (OCR) and digital typefaces for programming.

The essay is richly illustrated and features many original documents. Full bibliography and notes are provided.