When uniformity in design is key the most basic means of ensuring homogenous letterforms is a lettering guide template, or stencil. The Normograph was invented by vocational school teacher Georg Bahr and was patented in Germany in 1909. It did not contain a full character set, but only a few elementary shapes — stems, arms, curve segments, diagonals — that needed to be combined into letters and numerals. Contemporary guides by most other manufacturers were equally limited.
