Father Robert Palladino, who inspired Mac typeface, dies at 83

Robert Palladino, 1.933-2.016

The father Robert Palladin, whose work as a calligraphy teacher influenced a young Steve Jobs and later the first iMac, died yesterday at 83 years old old. Palladino, was a Roman Catholic priest who learned the art of calligraphy as a Trappist monk and inspired the transformative typefaces used in early computers and, by extension, the modern personal computer (PC). Before the Mac, computers and operating systems used fonts and fonts created by IBM.

Robert Palladino and Steve Jobs met during their training at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, where it was their calligraphy teacher from 1969 to 1984. Jobs joined Palladino's class after leaving Reed College in 1972 and, it seems, was very shocked, coming to argue with the developers of the Mac operating system for wanting to include fonts in computers that were believed impossible at the time.

Greek letters type

Robert Palladino, 1.933-2.016

In the 2005 commencement speech, Jobs spoke about the impact Palladino's teachings had on him:

None of this, no hope of having any practical application in my life. But 10 years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped out of that course in college, The Mac would never have had multiple proportionally spaced typefaces or fonts. And since Windows only copied the Mac, it is likely that no personal computer would have it. If I had never dropped out, I would never have fallen for this type of calligraphy, and personal computers might not have had the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking back ten years later.

Jobs did not mention it, but Palladino was asked about the creation of the first Greek letters of the Mac and the priest said "He took my class and became very interested in letter shapes. Came back a year or so later and said he was interested in my Greek alphabet«.

Palladino had his influence on the computer revolution, but he never used a computer. Rest in peace.