E-13B

The font was devised in the United States in the late 1950s to rescue cheque handling from drowning in paper — Bank of America's ERMA project automated a process that was otherwise threatening to swamp the banks. Ten digits and four symbols are printed in iron-oxide ink; the name refers to a 0.013-inch grid the shapes are built on.

Standardised in ISO 1004, E-13B dominates in North America, the UK and Australia, while Europe mostly uses the parallel CMC-7 font. A MICR reader magnetises the ink and reads the signal each character gives off — harder to forge and more robust against smudges than reading the shapes optically.