Posted on 09/09/2004 12:26:11 PM PDT by Oblongata
I have to just take a minute to do some bragging here. I apologize in advance.
Last night I was reading FR as this story broke. I submitted a tip on the drudgereport page, and sent this email to drudge at 2:42am :
"http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1210702/posts
The documents CBS supplied recently are written in a PROPORTIONALLY SPACED font.
If you can figure out how Lt. Col. Jerry Killian managed to produce a document like that, on a typewriter in 1972, I would like to hear it.
The only typewriter capable of proportional fonts at the time, was an IBM Executive. Secretaries had to go to school to learn how to use these. Each line had to be typed twice. They cost a fortune.
In other words, this is not the typewriter a Lt. Col. would use to type a personal memo.
Regards,
Oblongata "
I also mentioned the superscript feature in the May 4th memo in the submitted tip.
This just proves the power of FR and the internet. None ofthis would have been possible without the dedicated work of all you FReepers. We must keep the poressure on!
Just finished trekking to the storage unit where we store obsolete equipment... Checked 2 mid-80's vintage Selectrics. No "th" on them.
The reason FR rules? We THINK!!!
Did you check Steve's doctural thesis? That's got to date back at least to the 70s.
I think a lot of us contacted Drudge.....
In 1976 I had a part-time secretarial job at which I used an IBM Executive. Each line did not have to be typed twice; however, in order to backspace to the correct space if I wanted to use correction tape, I would have to backspace various amounts of times, depending on which letter. For example, for an "M" I would have to backspace three or four times, but for an "i" only once.
In any case, the font was completely different from the fonts on the Killian documents.
The possibility that the documents are faked has touched off a firestorm! And you threw an early match! Congratulations - I'm loving it!
Fantastic!!!!!
You've done us all proud!
Congratulations, good eyes! While it's perhaps true that such a machine might have existed circa the dates on those memos, I most seriously doubt it would be hanging around a funky National Guard base in Texas.
We must keep the poressure on! SAF-Ping
You may get the presidential medal of honor for this. The DU crowd is probably thinking purple hearts. Watch your backside.
The more difficult task of full justification is a device facilitated by the "Selectric-Composer" model.
The proportional font spacing of the Executive was introduced by IBM in 1941.
http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html
IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.
Brilliant.
That was just plain incredible detective work. I saw one of your earlier posts and was musing...interesting. I see the day of MSM dominance is over. It's what Drudge said long ago, we can all become reporters.
Well done.
I think you're right. I need to apologize to all the other FReepers. I feel guilty like I'm taking to much credit here. I'm just caught up in the moment, because it's the first time I feel like I am involved in what could become a huge story. But you're right I need to keep a level head.
The Selectric is more recent than the Executive. The Executive was a traditional hammer and typebar unit, not a ball printer.
I actually used an IBM Electronic Typewriter 50 with proportional spacing in the 1980s. That was a Selectric with proportional spacing typeballs. I think that technology pretty much lived and died with that model. I don't remember a font similar to the ones used in the memos even then.
The Selectrics were hot stuff when introduced and were extremely expensive. They had interchangeable type fonts which made it possible to use different faces. The Executive did not have such a feature.
There's no way you could type a th as one character with an Executive unless it was actually part of the type font hard-wired into the typewriter.
I would say that in a military setting it would be extremely unlikely to have something like that lying around. These typewriters were designed for applications where the look of a document was important. All the military stuff I've seen is typed on old-style typewriters that don't even have the baseline lined up. I don't think they would ever have proportional units.
D
In the mid 70s I bought a correcting selectric. If I recall correctly, it had two font balls. It was expensive, but not excessively so.
Yup...I was in the last half of my senior year in high school in 1976 when I learned how to use one at a vocational technical school, we didn't have them in our high school typing classes. I hated those things...making corrections was a pain in the posterior.
Ouch.
I still say that there may be a problem with the formating (headers and signature block).
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