Napoleon invaded Egypt, and, in his need to communicate with his military, he used a variety of systems. There was a semaphore system and there was a placard system. The placards that Napoleon's troops used to send messages used a slab serif font. It was more readable through telescopes. It is also said that the crates that were sent back to France with the booty of war used similar lettering. There is an additional story that the letters were based on lettering seen in ancient ruins.
These typefaces have a mechanical, regimented appearance than oldstyle serif fonts. The strokes that create the letterforms may make a slight transition from thick to thin, or, more commonly, there may be no transition at all. There no bracketing between the stem and the serif.
One of Napoleon’s engineers found the Rosetta Stone, which turned out to be the key that unlocked ancient hieroglyphics and allowed us to hear the voices of the past. This created interest in Egyptian archeology and a mania for anything Egyptian. Type foundries named their typefaces with an Egyptian reference. To this day this category of type is called “Egyptian,” even though there is no connection between the style and the country.
Many slab serifs have names like Cairo, Scarab, Memphis, Nile, and Karnak. Slab serif typefaces evolved rapidly during the Industrial Revolution as a result of the increased use of posters, billboards, and other forms of advertising.
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