Reuter Monitor

BBC2’s Secrets of the Museum series about the Victoria & Albert Museum gave a brief glimpse this week of an old Reuter Monitor terminal from 1973 (photo).

The latest episode featured Sir Kenneth Grange, one of Britain’s greatest industrial designers, now 92, who is donating his archive and examples of products he designed to the V&A.

The programme showed a whole range of his designs, including a Kenwood food mixer, parking meter, Kodak camera, Parker pen, typewriter, cigarette lighter, TX1 black cab, scissors, rural post box, Anglepoise lamp, and the Reuter Monitor. But Grange said the thing he was proudest of was British Rail’s Intercity 125 train.

Grange was a founding partner of Pentagram, a design consultancy, when he drew up the keyboard and screen for the Reuter Monitor. Pentagram did a lot of other work too for Reuters, including most famously the logo presenting the name “Reuters” in dots, below.

Reuter Monitor: The Big Bet

The origin of Reuters dot-matrix logo, by Michael Nelson ■