What about IBM executives or selectrics that advertised proportional fonts? Would a proportional font spacing have the effect you're describing? It sounds like the spacing issue is more for justifying type, since you discussed typing first and letting the number of characters be processed. In other words, please explain the difference. Lefties are clinging to the idea that if they can just produce one typewriter with superscript and proportional fonts (regardless of how unlikely it would be that anybody would have actually used one in the ANG), then they've met their burden of proof.
Kerning deals with a different graphic problem. An "M" followed by an "L" for instance, looks normal in any type face. However, an "F" followed by an "A" or a "T" followed by a "C" the pair of letters looks oddly spaced unless the second letter tightens up to and ducks under the first letter, by just a hundredth of an inch or so.
This is called kerning. It is most obvious in the headlines of the full-page display ads in any magazine you pick up. Just pick up any magazine you choose, look at the ads (the process is there in the text also, but not as easy to see). Note the times when the second letter ducks under, or looms over, part of the first letter to eliminate white space and tighten up the type setting. You'll understand kerning.
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Go back and read about the kerning. The point is that for kerning to work, the machine must be congnizant of the letters that precede and succede each other. That was just not possible in 72 on anything except a typeset machine for printing books, etc.
The IBM Executive just adjusted a fixed amount for each letter. Different spaces for each letter, yes. But the same space for the same letter every time.
In the example "TO", the "O" will be shoved a bit closer to the "T", than it would in the example "OO", because the "O" will underlay the "T" just a wee bit. That's kerning.
By the time you accumulate kerning for a whole line, there's no way it would overlay it on the end.
The centering on the 4 may 72 doc, which also relys on kerning, also would have been basically impossible. You would have to pre-type the address, measure it within a tiny fraction of an inch, and exactly space to that point.
Naw, they're fake.
They didn't kern....computers kern.
Tomi
It should display on your screen in a proportional font, but take a look at the "To" letter combination. The T and o are too far apart, even though the spacing is proportional.
Kerning moves certain letter combinations closer together, and in some cases they actually overlap, so that the left edge of the o will fall under the right crossbar of the T.
The algorithm for doing this was first published in 1981. Before this, even the most sophisticated word processors could not do kerning.
What you see in my example is HTML, which does not do kerning. Word processor programs, such as MS Word do it automatically.
I can answer your question about the super-scripts and how they were typed back in 1972.
In 1972, I typed on an IBM Executive typewriter, and I know FOR SURE there were no special keys for sub-scripts and super-scripts. (Keys which would place smaller letters above or below the typing line.)
We had to "manually" roll DOWN the platen 1/2 degree (there was a click) to type super-scripts, such as th or st.
You had to hold the platen at that awkward position with one hand, and peck ONE key with your the other hand. Usually, the platen would jerk and move somewhat, and if the super-script was 2-characters, you had to again "manually" roll DOWN the platen before striking the second character. Then you'd have to re-position the platen so that the typing line was correct.
So the super-script "th" would be exactly the same size as the "th" in the rest of the document. There was no such thing as a "smaller" type font for superscripts in 1972 on the IBM Executive Typewriter.
One other thing about typing on the IBM Executive. One had to be an excellent typist to type a page without at least ONE erasure. Good secretaries were able to make erasures which didn't show -- but upon examination, one could always see erasures. I've had bosses who'd turn the sheet over -- to inspect the page for erasures.
Of course, since no one can produce the ORIGINAL (because it doesn't exist), we can't inspect the original page. And erasures would not show up on copies, unless they were messy erasures.
The most damning evidence I've seen with these RATHER documents is that the "centering" on one of them was exactly centered the same as a Word Processing Program would center. I've seen a presentation here on FR where one was "over-layed" the other, and it was EXACT. And that is nearly an impossibility.
Centering on an IBM Executive was a guessing game and no two people would center the same. Also the exact width of the margins -- matching modern Word Processing Systems -- is a real long shot. Secretaries typing on manual typewriters didn't use the same left margin for every document. We changed the left margin frequently -- to match the letterhead or the paper form on which we were typing.
Too much of a coincidence if the margins are exactly as the default of Microsoft Word.