Thanks Dick for your interest.
I posted the first picture in the hope that some readers would use the web address to look for more information.
I find it quite fascinating where web addresses appear these days.
[Supplementary note of Monday 14 November 2022]
The third photograph in the following video of still photographs shows the web address.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeyHeeajvqY
[End of supplementary note of Monday 14 November 2022]
[Supplementary note of 9 October 2010 about the next paragraph.
Subsequent developments mean that the search suggested in the next paragraph may not now yield the results so easily. I am hoping to add an explanatory post later today in this thread so as not to spoil the search fun suggested in the next paragraph. So readers trying the search may prefer to search for 60163 grey and 60163 2008 instead, but I cannot quite get the answer using that at present, so maybe the post that I hope to post later will be a better route.
End of supplementary note about the next paragraph]
Another web address which might perhaps be of interest can be found by going to
http://www.youtube.com and searching for 60163 and then looking for a web address displayed in a prominent place on an object shown in a video.
I know that finding the web addresses in pictures on the internet is not the same as finding them directly on the objects in real life, though perhaps some of the amazement still gets through.
I remember when the web first got popular in the world at large in the mid-1990s that vans with web addresses would state that the web address was a web address. Then fairly quickly the stating that a web address was a web address got dropped and now just the main part without the http:// part at the start gets used, presumably with the presumption that people will know that it is a web address.
Having seen the lettering on the Eof statue I began to think of whether there could be a sculpture of an early printing press made of bronze, perhaps with the vertical posts made as if a sketch using square-sectioned bronze rod of about 25mm sides to denote the side edges and the top edges of the posts: this in order both to keep the cost down and to make a design centred on the lettering.
Then the bed of the press could have type, say 72 point or maybe larger, cast in bronze with tangs on the base so that they could not be removed from the sculpture, yet could be moved about using slot-ways in the base of the type bed, one "north-south" slot with several "east-west" slots running to one side from the "north-south" slot and a slot from the other side of the "north-south" slot leading to a typecase area.
This would mean that short items of text could be set in the type bed.
The type could then be photographed and possibly brass-rubbed as well so as to produce permanent images.
The bronze font would need to be produced and so maybe only capitals would be produced with more A's than Z's as in a traditional metal card fount, though hopefully two ampersands would be included.
The design of the sculpture and the design and manufacture of the font could be interesting. As well as letters there would need to be spacing and some punctuation, including what are sometimes referred to as smart quotes in electronic fonts.
Maybe the sculpture could be placed in the garden of a Museum of Renaissance Printing.
William Overington
15 November 2008