One of the great mysteries in (my) life. Why are the ubiquitous 7-segment LED displays always slightly tilted to the right? Everywhere from the Apollo guidance computer displays to fuel pumps to CD players to digital watches (which earthlings consider to be a great idea) they’re always leaning to the right.
Why? Why? Why?
I’ve seen some that are straight up and down. I suppose the tilting kind of makes it look like italics, which are a little easier to read. Or something.
Even so… they still aren’t happy.
The straight ones tend to be an exception and/or novelty in design it seems.
WAG
They have always been that way?
First, you have to remember what the display is replacing, a set of numbers written in a particular font.
In most fonts, seven segments would not be able to represent them directly, too many curves and serifs and the like.
When seven segment displays first came out they looked like geometric shapes to the untrained eye, not everyone was used to reading them.
By slanting them over slightly, they suddenly stop being little geometric square boxes and look more like the lean of a right handed writer.
It just makes them that bit more obvious, at least when folk had never seen them before, and I suppose the convention has since stuck
I think this is the most likely of casdave’s speculations. It gives them a slightly humanistic aspect. Now, why would designers choose to do this for this particular feature of this particular piece of technology? What made them feel as if that would be desireable? What were they sensing? Where is Tufte now that we need him?