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I spent enough time manually preparing our school's newsmagazine, including service as an article typist relying upon an IBM Seletric that I can say I never saw a superscript 'th' on any of the various Selectric golf balls then available. My stint in this role is around the same time of these documents, and would apparently involve similar typewriting equipment.

"1/2", "1/4" are characters that even some other typewriters I used then, and some of those currently in my collection of same, include.

Why a superscript "th" but no "st" or "nd", for another example?

I further agree about the type itself; the Selectric is the only model of the time in my recollection that would allow for changeable fonts, and Times New Roman was not available until the advent of software word processing.

Here is a sampling of the misinformation put forth on these threads that has already been debunked:

Budding Myth #1: "Proportional fonts were not available til the 80's."
Debunked: Proportional fonts were available on IBM typewriters in 1941.

Budding Myth #2: "Times New Roman font wasn't invented until 1988."
Debunked: The Times New Roman font was designed in 1931 by Stanley Morison, Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation, with the assistance of draughtsman Victor Lardent.

Budding Myth #3: "There was no '4' available without a foot and the top closed."
Debunked: The IBM Selectric Composer Pressman Roman (Times New Roman) font of 1968 has exactly the right '4'.

Budding Myth #4: "The document was altered because one of the 'y's' is different from another 'y'."
Debunked: All typos made with typewriters were corrected by "altering" the document.

Budding Myth #5: "You need to use a complicated guage system to backspace with an IBM Selectric Composer typewriter."
Debunked: The IBM Selectric had a memory system that automatically adjusted the backstroke to exactly match the letter widths of the previously typed text as far back as 1968.

Budding Myth #6: "The type of typewriter that could do this would have cost $20,000 dollars back then."
Debunked: At least one type of typewriter that could do this was available for around $300.

These may be forgeries, but not because of any of the above reasons.