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To: GOPcapitalist

IBM did have a special typesetting machine, the IBM Composer, which WOULD automatically center type if you typed it twice.
http://www.ibmcomposer.org/

I used to use one at work, but I was a professional printer from 1975-1983. It was a bear to use.

Was Killian a professional typesetter? Maybe he used such a machine at work for these memos.

Otherwise, I can't explain why he would have used it.

Nor can I explain why the type lines up exactly like 12 point Times New Roman using Word set to default formatting.


181 posted on 09/09/2004 6:30:03 PM PDT by CobaltBlue
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To: CobaltBlue
The bottom line here: the law of probabilities is stacking up against CBS. Each and every complicating factor to this story makes it less probable that the memo is authentic. Let's suppose some probabilities and show how this works. Consider:

The first problem with the documents is the proportional spacing. There weren't many proportionally spaced typewriters in the early 70's so lets say the odds against Killian having one are 10,000 to 1.

The second problem we encounter is the superscript text. The probability of typewriters in the early 70's having a superscript key is even more remote. Let's suppose the odds against it are 100,000 to 1.

Next we move to centering. Let's say the odds against that are 1 million to 1.

Next we move to Times New Roman font. Let's say the odds against that are 10 million to 1.

While a remote chance theoretically exists that each individual problem is explanable by technology at the time, however obscure it may have been, when you take them all together it becomes geometrically more remote. Not only do you have to have a machine that does proportional spacing. You also need one with a "th" superscript key, times new roman font, and a centering device that is so precise it matches the exact capabilities of a modern word processor program. Simply put, the probability of that kind of a typewriter existing in Killian's possession in 1972 has got to be somewhere in the range of several billion, if not trillion, to one.

196 posted on 09/09/2004 6:52:20 PM PDT by GOPcapitalist ("Can Lincoln expect to subjugate a people thus resolved? No!" - Sam Houston, 3/1863)
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