prove popular, however, and Dwiggins designed a true italic, named "Electra Cursive", which was released in 1940. From this point Electra became a popular book type in American printing: Walter Tracy described it as a "modern classic" in American bookwork, although he felt Dwiggins' italic, his first to be published as a type design, was awkwardly balanced in some characters. In Britain, the war prevented Electra Cursive's release, and the typeface never attained the same popularity. Digital revivals and interpretations Electra was digitized in 1994 by Alex Kaczun for Linotype and Adobe. Both a standard and display cut were produced in regular and boldface, although even the standard cut appears thin at typical text sizes (a common issue with early digitizations of metal type). This version uses the longer descenders from the metal version; the italic is Electra Cursive. Although for the most part an exact copy of the outlines of the metal type, the lowercase "f" is given a longer overhang, without the restrictions of the Linotype machine. The Linotype release features separate fonts for small caps and text figures, while the Adobe release incorporates these as OpenType features. Bitstream digitized Electra as Transitional 521; it is the most basic of the digital offerings, with only a basic Latin character set and few typographic features. The italic, which uses Electra Cursive, is available only in the regular weight. A version of this design released by Tilde has a wider range of accented and special characters, but no additional weights or features. Compugraphic’s cold type Electra copy, Elante, is available digitally from Monotype. It uses the shorter descenders from the metal version of Electra. Jim Parkinson has created several fonts based on the original Electra: An in-house typeface for the San Francisco Chronicle in the early 1990s, which came to be known as Electric; it was heavier than Electra and had shorter extenders. Parkinson complemented it for headings with a digitisation of Dwiggins' sans-serif Metro. Azuza (2001), which preserved the general proportions of Electric but added more refined details. Produced in three weights: light, medium, and bold, with italics based on Electra Cursive. Parkinson Electra (2010), created for Linotype as an improvement over their original digital version. It is a freer interpretation than the 1992 version, featuring a heavier regular weight and more delicate serifs to improve its presence on the page. Produced in three weights: regular, bold, and heavy,