A COMPARISON OF LOWER CASE AND CAPITAL LETTERS FOR HIGHWAY SIGNS

DURING THE LAST TWO YEARS IN THE CALIFORNIA DIVISION OF HIGHWAYS HAS EXPERIMENTED WITH THE DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF LOWER CASE LETTERS FOR OVERHEAD DESTINATION SIGNS ON FREEWAYS. RECOGNITION OF WORD PATTERNS IS KNOWN TO BE FUNDAMENTAL IN CLOSE READING OF ORDINARY PRINTED MATERIAL AND IT WAS THOUGHT THAT HABIT AND PATTERN FACTORS MIGHT ALSO MAKE THIS FORM OF LETTER DESIRABLE FOR HIGHWAY SIGNS. OPINION AS TO THEIR EFFECTIVENESS HAS BEEN VARIED, HOWEVER. THE PROBLEM THEREFORE WAS TO MEASURE THE DISTANCE AT WHICH LOWER CASE SIGNS COULD BE READ AS COMPARED TO ROUNDED CAPITAL LETTERS. EXPERIMENTS WERE UNDERTAKEN TO DETERMINE THE DISTANCES AT WHICH SIGNS OF EACH KIND OF ALPHABET COULD BE READ. LETTERS FROM 5 IN. TO 18 IN. IN HEIGHT WERE MOUNTED ON A BRIDGE 17 FT. ABOVE THE GROUND AND A TOTAL OF 75 OBSERVERS MADE 3939 INDIVIDUAL OBSERVATIONS UNDER DAYLIGHT AND ARTIFICIAL ILLUMINATION. /AUTHOR/

• Record URL:
  https://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/hrbproceedings/30/30-035.pdf
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Vol 30, pp 355-373, 10 FIG, 4 TAB, 6 PHOT. Distribution, posting, or copying of this PDF is strictly prohibited without written permission of the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. Unless otherwise indicated, all materials in this PDF are copyrighted by the National Academy of Sciences. Copyright © National Academy of Sciences. All rights reserved.
• Authors:
  • Forbes, T W
  • Moscowitz, K
  • Morgan, G
  • Loutzenheiser, D W
• Publication Date: 1951

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Monograph Title: Proceedings of the Thirtieth Annual Meeting of the Highway Research Board Held at Washington, D.C., January 9-12, 1951
• Serial:
  • Highway Research Board Proceedings
  • Volume: 30
  • Publisher: Highway Research Board

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Financial capital; Legibility; Lettering; Pattern recognition systems; Road markings; Traffic signs; Visibility
• Uncontrolled Terms: Lower case letters
• Old TRIS Terms: Letters; Word markings
• Subject Areas: Highways; Operations and Traffic Management;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 00225999
• Record Type: Publication
• Files: TRIS, TRB
• Created Date: Jul 25 1971 12:00AM