Bignon Commission

[1] It was headed by Abbé Bignon, who selected the royal typographer Jacques Jaugeon, the scholar Gilles Filleau des Billettes, and Father Sébastien Truchet to assist him.

[2][1] The commission reported that the project would be feasible[1] and began by examining French printing and typography, as the "art by which all others are preserved".

[3] As part of the project, Jaugeon and Truchet established the first typographic point system,[4] vector fonts, the bitmap, slanted italic type,[n 1] and the Romain du Roi ("King's Roman") font,[5] which later developed into Times New Roman.

In 1710, the work continued under a new chief editor, René Antoine Ferchault de Réaumur.

[6] The release of Diderot and D'Alembert's Encyclopedia in 1750 led the Academy to finally publish a 73-volume Descriptions of the Arts and Trades but it remains generally unknown.