Bill Hill, one of the key figures behind Microsoft’s ClearType technology, has died. He reportedly suffered a heart attack on Wednesday. Click here for his blog, which was last updated in September.
The ClearType project began in the late 1990s as an attempt to improve the appearance of text on computer display screens. If you look at text on a screen, sometimes the letters are uniformly black (non-ClearType) and sometimes they have varied intensity (ClearType). This latter approach sacrifices some of the fidelity of the letter in favour of trying to improve the overall reading experience. Here’s Microsoft’s explanation.
Having initially worked in the newspaper industry, Hill went on to help develop the page layout program for Aldus. He was then hired by Microsoft in 1994 to run their typography group, and he stayed with the company for fifteen years before leaving in 2009 to work on other screen-reading projects.
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