Five images: the same swollen letterforms as Four —
e a B n o — from perfectly legible to maximally destroyed. A different machine
was shown each one, twenty times over, and asked to transcribe any text it could
see. Shown an unrelated image instead, it correctly reports it can't read any text.
Shown this row of five letters, at any stroke width, including the one where all
five are perfectly legible, it reports exactly one of them.
Below is every reply, unedited, grouped by image. There are 100. They are all
the same word.
The letters themselves are reused from an earlier, unpublished study of
enclosed-counter behaviour under a thickening stroke, not chosen for this
piece — see Four for the specific reason each of
the five was picked. Reused here for the same practical reason: a specimen
whose five letterforms already fail in five different ways, already legible
at every stroke width tested.
