Edison is the result of Hermann Zapf's wish to create a typeface with maximum legibility for the Digiset typesetting machine (a typesetter produced by the German firm Dr.-Ing Rudolf Hell GmbH in Kiel).
The lowercase letters of Edison are enlarged as the result of reading tests, while the capital letters are slightly reduced. The 8 point size - normally used for newspapers - look more like 9,5 point. This enlarged x-height of the Edison lowercase letters was the result of tests on newspaper pages with bad (gray) inking to find the most comfortable proportions and the weight for the basic roman. This all is important because good typefaces tailored to the purpose of getting information easily from the printed page is of the same importance as the presentation of the message itself.
Hermann Zapf's Edison is a modern, wilful newspaper font. Its free and individual forms mark this font as a newsprint font of the new generation. The strong strokes of Edison can give an impression of a slab serif font and its robust forms make this font very flexible. Even inferior paper and newsprint techniques cannot disturb Edison's characters or classic impression.
In 1990, Linotype AG merged with Dr.-Ing Rudolf Hell GmbH, forming the Linotype-Hell AG (today Linotype GmbH). Since then, Linotype has been the official source of all fonts that were originally designed for the Hell Corporation. Linotype has also improved the typefaces using new technologies, including OpenType.
