ingebretsen

This is a styling framework. No patentable concepts. The code itself might fall under copyright law (which is MIT license), but not the visuals. If anything would apply there, it is probably more like trademark law, but this seems far afoot.

I found a kit (magnet + copper tube) here: http://www.teachersource.com/product/645/electricity-magneti...

Not on the same scale, but appears to be designed to demonstrate the same concept.

That's a fantastic quote and I'll update the post with that. The only corner case that I don't think it covers is type that has been digitally converted from an analog form to its digital equivalent. Lots of favorite typefaces fall into this category: Futura, Helvetica, Rockwell, etc.

That's a totally fair point. They're really visually distinct, especially to someone with any eye for type. Garamond is confusing because it's so old and so influential. Maybe it would have been better to choose something like Futura which, I think, most people would agree is a single typeface but can be purchased digitally from multiple foundries as a distinct font.

The distinction was easier before digital type. Today we have no physical object to represent a font. The font file itself might be the closest analog to pre-digital fonts but that seems to be an even more extreme view than I took in the post.