The Man from 2026

A TOP SECRET memorandum of 1962 that was never released: an interviewing officer's flat account of a man who says he came from 2026 and built his time machine by talking to another machine.

How it is made

Typed with tw-type on the /Typewriter font, an elite manual struck at an even hand (/StrikeWear 0.5, so the darkness varies without whole letters fading out; every strike is still its own: the weave in the ink, feathered edges, a few light or high letters, the e clogged on this machine). The memo-for-the-record header, tab stops, two x-outs, a strikeover (<o>offcie|office</o>) and an underscore are markup in one text string. The same machine then types the control lines in black and, with its ribbon lifted to the red half (tw-set with a red /Ink, and a /Bleed from above that puts the black half into the tops of a few letters), the classification at the head and foot of the sheet. rel-page with /Generation 0 makes it the ribbon original, never copied: aged legal paper, two punch holes, a gem clip, the scanner's tilt and lamp. The registry stamp, a regrading box, the routing initials and the margin note (lib/handscript.ps) are marks over the page. The office, people and places are invented; the only real names are in the man's own testimony.

Details

Category: Lettering and type
Tags: typewriter document
Libraries: artkit, handscript, released, surfacekit, typewriter, typewriter_outlines
Added: 2026-10-15
Built in: issue #590
Page size: 612 × 1008 points

Source

View source the whole program in a scrolling window, or read gallery/time_traveler_memo.ps on GitHub. To draw it yourself, from a checkout of the repository:

pscat --page 612x1008 gallery/time_traveler_memo.ps

The first 40 of 124 lines of the source

%!PS-Adobe-3.0
%%Title: The Man from 2026 -- a TOP SECRET memorandum of 1962 that was never released
%%BoundingBox: 0 0 612 1008
%%EndComments

% A memorandum for the record from an invented inquiry office: an interviewing
% officer's flat account of a man found in a culvert who says he came from the
% year 2026, and built his machine by talking to another machine. It is the
% ribbon original, kept as the record copy and never released: no release
% stamps, no case numbers and no redactions, only the classification typed in
% red at the head and foot of the sheet, the control number, the registry's
% stamps, a paper clip and the initials and note of the people who read it.
% Every office, person and place in it is made up; the only real names are in
% the man's own testimony.
%
%   lib/typewriter.ps  tw-type: the memo header, tab stops, a strikeover <o>,
%                      x-outs <x>, an underscore <u>, and the ribbon ink of an
%                      elite manual at an even hand (/StrikeWear 0.5); then tw-set on the same machine for
%                      the control lines and the red half of a black/red
%                      ribbon for the banners (/Ink red, and /Bleed 0.85 from
%                      /above: the black half creeps into the tops of a few
%                      red letters)
%   lib/released.ps    rel-page: an original, not a copy (/Generation 0):
%                      aged paper, punch holes, a gem clip, the scanner's tilt
%                      and lamp, and the stamps and notes over the type
%   lib/handscript.ps  the routing initials and the margin note
%
%   pscat --page 612x1008 --png time_traveler_memo.png gallery/time_traveler_memo.ps
%   gs -q -dNOSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=png16m -r144 -g1224x2016 \
%      -dGraphicsAlphaBits=4 -dTextAlphaBits=4 \
%      -sOutputFile=time_traveler_memo_gs.png gallery/time_traveler_memo.ps </dev/null

(lib/artkit.ps) run
(lib/surfacekit.ps) run
(lib/handscript.ps) run
(lib/typewriter_outlines.ps) run
(lib/typewriter.ps) run
(lib/released.ps) run

1 setgray clippath fill