Fingerpost

However, the oldest fingerpost still extant is thought to be that close to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, dated 1669 and pointing to Oxford, Warwick, Gloucester and Worcester (abbreviated to 'Gloster' and 'Woster').

[2] The Motor Car Act 1903 passed road sign responsibilities to the relevant highway authority within the then United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, although no specifications were set.

Mandatory standards (The Traffic Signs (Size, Colour and Type) Provisional Regulations) were passed for Great Britain in 1933 which required poles to painted with black and white bands and lettering to be of a different typeface.

Signposts were removed across much of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland during World War II, lest enemy forces use them for navigation, and replaced in the late 1940s.

[citation needed] Whilst the 1964 regulations did not bring about a general requirement to remove all fingerposts in Great Britain (signage in Northern Ireland being treated somewhat separately), some counties appear to have been more zealous than others in eradicating them.

In recent years several county councils have embarked on restoration and repair programmes for their fingerpost stock, including the Highway Heritage Project in the Quantock Hills of Somerset.

The inclusion of the highway authority name took the form of raised or recessed lettering written down the poles or as part of a finial or roundel (when the centre is hollow, called an annulus) design, either in full or as initials (e.g. K.C.C.

The Ministry for Transport asked the County Councils in Dorset and the West Riding of Yorkshire to experiment with the inclusion of a grid reference[6] and these remain common in these areas.

The roundel on a 2005 replacement at West Wellow (Hampshire) directing travellers to St Margaret's Church bears a portrait of Florence Nightingale who is interred at the churchyard.

Various theories have been put forward as to their colour, including being to mark routes used by prisoners on their way to port for transportation to Australia, or the site of a gibbet.

Some highway authorities chose to apply the spirit of the Worboys regulations in a fingerpost style, including the use of the Transport Heavy typeface.

The source of the title is found in an epigraph to Part IV of the novel: a—much abbreviated—translation of Aphorism XXI from Book Two, Section XXXVI of Francis Bacon's Novum Organum Scientiarum.

More recently, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California has installed LED fingerposts which orient themselves to planets, missions, and exoplanets using data supplied by the Deep Space Network.