If it is true that the misspelling was caused by the camera lens, why wouldn’t ALL of the “a”’s look like “U”’s. Why would it only affect only one letter on the entire document?
“Characters which are distorted due to gaps on the typewriter ink ribbon and variability in the type bar striking the ribbon against a paper document.”
Typewriter letters are made of metal. While a worn ribbon will cause the letters to appear lighter, the letters will NOT change shape. Letters will not become taller or shorter and parts of the letters will NOT move in relation to one another because of a worn ribbon.
“If it is true that the misspelling was caused by the camera lens, why wouldn’t ALL of the “a”’s look like “U”’s.”
The word is spelled as Hawaii and not as Huwaii. You are simply misreading the “a” as a “u”. We can see it, albeit with some little difficulty. Why can’t you?
“Typewriter letters are made of metal.”
Not all of them were cast in metal. In 1961 the typewriter typeface was cast in metal. In later years it was also cast in meetallized plastics and plastics, especially with respect to printer thimbles and daisywheels.
“While a worn ribbon will cause the letters to appear lighter, the letters will NOT change shape. Letters will not become taller or shorter and parts of the letters will NOT move in relation to one another because of a worn ribbon.”
You are very badly mistaken in your comments. The Obama Certificate of Live Birth is most certainly a forgery. Many of the characters and other elements are evidence of the forgery. Nonetheless, the forgery includes the kinds of typographic flaws typical of most typewritten documents. Alingment of the character on the baseline is a common problem in typewritten documents. Some typewriters are much worse than others.
In particular, the shifting on a manual typewriter tends to create a varying height above the baseline depending on the typists operation of the shift key. Monospacing manual typewriters do not kern characters on the baseline. Nonetheless, some typewriter mechanisms were not tight in their adjustments, and rapid typing could slightly alter the placement of the character because the escapement of the platen was still in motion as the typebar was brought against the typewriter ribbon. The shifting up of the typewriter ribbon in front of the typebar was also affected by the manual typist’s tempo of typing, resulting in slight variations in area of the ribbon struck by the typeface. To better utilize the ink on the ribbon, typewriters did not advance the ribbon to a pristine section of the riboon for the typeface to strike. Instead, the areas struck by the typeface overlapped on the ribbon. This overlap on the ribbon resulted in some areas of the typeface being more fully inked, while other parts of the typeface received less ink. The heavily inked portions of the typeface would smear the exxcess ink, the medium inked areas tended to look more normal, and the areas with too little ink would print poorly on the paper or not at all in some small spots. This variation in ink transfer, tempo of opration, and manual variations by the typist created what appeared to be distoritons in shape, vertical alignment, and horizontal alignment. Examining and comparing known historical typewritten documents provides innumerable examples. Look at the historical typewritten documents online at the Presidential Libraries, and anyone kind find copious examples of these flaws in typewritten documents.
I own a number of manual and electric typewriters. They range from 19th Century pioneers to the latest daisywheels. I’m an IBM trained and authorised customer service engineer for the IBM Selectric and IBM Wheelwriter typewriters and printers. When I examined the Obama documents, one of the first things I did was perform some real world tests to compare typewritten results and find anything that looked like discrepancies. Suffice it to say the natural imperfections in typewritten documents, especially from manual typewriters of unknown origin can be highly problematic in certain instances. Before anyone goes around proclaiming an ability to see and interpret evidence of forgery in the alignment of the typed characters, they had better be fully prepared to demonstrate beyond all reasonable doubt how the claimed flaw cannot be found in known typewritten original documents. The failure to recognize the letter “a” and misidentification of it as the letter “u” in Hawaii fails such a test coming right out of the gate.
The one thing not needed is for well intentioned people and/or Obama shills to be crying wolf about the evidence of forgery, especially when there is so much more solid and blatant evidence of real forgery in this document.