Professor Laffitte analyzes student’s reading by using the ophthalmograph. The machine determines reading speed by recording the number of eye fixations—eye pauses—for each line of type.

A type face which was chosen by an assistant professor of psychology at Winthrop College in Rock Hill, S.C., is being used by the Rock Hill Evening Herald for its 11-pica columns.

A recent change to 11-pica columns called for new mats, and the Herald staff had not been able to decide on a new type face. So Assistant Professor R. Laffitte of the college was asked to help. Professor Laffitte directs the reading program at Winthrop.

After Professor Laffitte accepted the assignment, he discovered there was no basic research available. He therefore decided to use a machine at the college for evaluating the reading ease of the type faces that were selected for the tests.

The machine is an ophthalmograph, and Professor Laffitte often uses it in classroom work to determine whether or not a student is having eye trouble.

The machine, Professor Laffitte explains, is essentially nothing more than a 35mm camera, enclosed in a chassis. The camera is used in combination with a set of lenses, which look much like lenses on a microscope. The two lenses—one for each eye—are focused in front of the eyes. Two beams of light shine onto the eyes, reflecting off the cornea (or eyeball) through the lenses and into the camera. The picture made by the camera is thus that of the light beam after it comes off the eyes and goes through the lenses. Thus, the camera records a picture of a moving spot of light.

Professor Laffitte used this analogy to show how the machine works in analyzing a person’s reading.

“Suppose you took a flat mirror and held it in front of a light. If you moved the mirror, but kept the light still, the beam of light reflected from the mirror would remain in the same place on the surface it was reflecting on. However, the eye has a convex shape, and when it moves with the beam of light reflecting from it, the beam of light changes angle with each eye movement. The amount of movement of the spot of light is proportional to the amount of movement of the eyeball as one reads.”

Thirteen 3×5 cards, each containing a two-inch paragraph of a selected type face on newsprint, were used for the test. After the subject read all 13 of the cards, the film was removed from the camera and developed. Professor Laffitte then read each negative. He counted the average number of eye fixations per line. The type face having the smallest number of fixations per line was considered the most readable. A fixation is essentially an eye pause. Each time the eyes come to a rest on a word, a fixation was recorded.

“The more times a person has to fixate (stop), the longer it will take him to read the story, and the longer it takes to read the story, the less readable it is,” said Professor Laffitte.

“What we were looking for,” he said, “was the type face that would allow a person to read the newspaper more rapidly and with greater ease.”

Each fixation lasts approximately ¹/₂₅-second. The Evening Herald’s new type face will contain about six fixations per line for the average adult reader.

Type faces tested were Imperial, Regal, Royal, and Corona in 8-and 9point sizes with variations of leading. The face chosen was 8-point Imperial set on a 9-point slug.

This article first appeared in the August 1962 issue of The Inland Printer/American Lithographer. Although uncredited, it is most likely written by Alexander S. Lawson.