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In January 2016, the Federal Highway Administration told states to stop putting a typeface called Clearview on new highway signs. Thirteen states were using it, and its designers were sure it was saving lives. Two years later, Congress overruled the agency with a single sentence in a spending bill.

This is the history of the two alphabets on American roads. Highway Gothic was drawn by a federal roads agency during World War II, tested on a bridge at a California fairground, and chosen for the Interstate after a trial on an unopened stretch of highway in Maryland. Clearview was designed in the 1990s by Don Meeker and James Montalbano to fix a problem Highway Gothic was never built for: brighter reflective signs and older drivers’ eyes.

Along the way: the 1942 Pentagon signs, the 1950 lowercase test, the “Metropolis” and “Utopia” signs that turned the Interstate green, Britain’s fight over Kinneir and Calvert’s Transport alphabet, and the research that both sides used to make their case.

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