MV Typewriter (Regular & Bold) Font

A font which is based on the lettering of the Thaana typewriter.

The Thaana typewriter was developed in 1986 by the Ministry of Education. The technology used in the Hermes typewriter was already obsolete in the 1980s. So it was not surprising that the typewriter had a short lifespan. Daisywheel and golf ball (typeball) typewriters with proportional spacing had been introduced in 1944. Dotmatrix typewriters were available in the 1970s. However, despite the crying need for proportional spacing in Thaana, the Hermes typewriter design was monospaced.

However, the \u201cfonts\u201d or type style used in the typewriter has some nostalgic beauty to it and is well worth preserving. I originally completed the font in 1996 using Fongtographer 2.0, but the glyphs have now been cleaned up and encoded in Unicode. Install all three styles of fonts. The menu on your wordprocessor or other application will show only MV Typewriter. However, selecting Bold or Italics will select the appropriate font file automatically.

The two gentlemen who were involved in the management of the development were Dr Mohamed Latheef (Kin\u2019bi) and Mr Abdul Azeez Yoosuf (Dhoonihuraa). Both are living, and they will passionately describe the work that went behind the development. I have a record of an interview with them from 2000. Thanks to Mohamed Rifath who gave me the photos. He had undergone a course in Brazil on repair and maintenance of Thaana typewriter. Ismail Habeeb Abdul Raheem lent me the book on Thaana Typewriting. He was a staff of the Non-Formal Education Centre which was responsible for training touch typists in Thaana.