Dan Rather Lied: Company that owns font did not License it till 1980!

Internet ^ | 5 May 1994 | Charles Bigalow

[Thanatos]

Times (New) Roman and its part in the Development of Scalable Font Technology

By Charles Bigelow

Charles Bigelow posted this article to the Usenet newsgroup "comp.fonts" in May 1994 in response to the question: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman? I am grateful to Prof. Bigelow for his permission to publish the article. I have taken the liberty of retitling it.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Subject: Re: What's the difference between Times Roman and Times New Roman?
From: Charles Bigelow
Date: 5 May 1994

"Times Roman" is the name used by Linotype, and the name they registered as a trademark for the design in the U.S. "Times New Roman" was and still is the name used by The Monotype Corporation. The face was developed by The Times newspaper for its own use, under the design direction of Stanley Morison. Originally cut by the Monotype Corp. in England, the design was also licensed to Linotype, because The Times used Linotype equipment for much of its actual production. The story of "The Times New Roman" can be found in Stanley Morison's A Tally of Types, published by Cambridge University Press, with additional, though not quite the same, versions in Nicolas Barker's biography of Stanley Morison, and in James Moran's biography of SM. (There should be an apostrophe in that name, "Times' Roman", I suppose, though no-one uses it.)

During WWII, the American Linotype company, in a generous spirit of Allied camaraderie, applied for registration of the trademark name "Times Roman" as its own, not Monotype's or The Times', and received the registration in 1945.

In the 1980's, all this was revisited when some entrepreneurs, desirous of gaining the rights to use the name, applied to Rupert Murdoch, who owned The Times; separately, a legal action was also initiated to clarify the right of Monotype to use the name in the U.S., despite Linotype's registration.

The outcome of all of the legal maneuverings is that Linotype and its licensees like Adobe and Apple continue to use the name "Times Roman", while Monotype and its licensees like Microsoft use the name "Times New Roman".

During the decades of transatlantic "sharing" of the Times designs, and the transfer of the faces from metal to photo to digital, various differences developed between the versions marketed by Linotype and Monotype. Especially these became evident when Adobe released the PostScript version, for various reasons having to do with how Adobe produced the original PostScript implementations of Times. The width metrics were different, as well as various proportions and details.

In the late 1980's, Monotype redrew its Times New Roman to make it fit exactly the proportions and metrics of the Adobe-Linotype version of Times Roman. Monotype claimed that its new version was better than the Adobe-Linotype version, because of smoother curves, better detailing, and generally greater sensitivity to the original designs done for The Times and Monotype by Victor Lardent, who worked under the direction of Stanley Morison. During the same period, Adobe upgraded its version of Times, using digital masters from Linotype, which of course claimed that it had a superior version, so there was a kind of competition to see who had the most refined, sensitive, original, genuine, bona-fide, artistically and typographically correct version. Many, perhaps most, users didn't notice and didn't care about these subtle distinctions, many of which were invisible at 10 pt at 300 dpi (which is an em of 42 pixels, a stem of three pixels, a serif of 1 pixel, and so on).

When Microsoft produced its version of Times New Roman, licensed from Monotype, in TrueType format, and when Apple produced its version of Times Roman, licensed from Linotype, in TrueType format, the subtle competition took on a new aspect, because both Microsoft and Apple expended a great deal of time and effort to make the TrueType versions as good as, or better than, the PostScript version. During the same period, Adobe released ATM along with upgraded versions of its core set of fonts, for improved rasterization on screen. Also, firms like Imagen, now part of QMS, and Sun developed rival font scaling technologies, and labored to make sure that their renderings of Times, licensed from Linotype in both cases, were equal to those of their competitors. Hence, the perceived quality of the Times design became a litmus for the quality of several font formats. Never before, and probably never again, would the precise placement of pixels in the serifs or 's' curves etc. of Times Roman occupy the attention of so many engineers and computer scientists. It was perhaps the supreme era of the Digital Fontologist.

As for the actual visual differences in the designs, well, like any good academic author, I leave the detection and analysis of those "as an exercise for the reader".

© Charles Bigelow

[Mach9]

Especially the Lehman citation.

[Mach9]

Has to be "intentional." In a country with straight judges, that mightn't be difficult to prove.

[Thanatos]

Selectric Type III Type Element List from Manual:

[kylaka]

Though IBM may have had proportional spacing on its later model selectrics, it is rather crude when compared to what is achievable with kerning value tables that were implemented on the earliest electronic typesetters and todays desktop publishing programs. To optimally space every possible letter combination of every concievable font requires a lot of computing horsepower. It really only became possible on any kind of scale in the early 1990's.

[nopardons]

I'm shocked,SHOCKED,that Dan is lying about this...NOT!

[agrace]

Me too, ariel is my favorite, FR is set to ariel on my computer.

[Mach9]

No--I want to see them BANKRUPT--as they are of scruples and ethics.

[Federalist_In_Michigan]

"...a flesh wound..."

LOL, it does sound like the DNC is being run by Monty Python.

[Mach9]

Excellent point.

[Michael121]

Dan Forger also said today that critics are focusing on the wrong issue. Also on Brits show, Juan Willaims said the same thing.

SO here is what I propose. Get a copy of a NY criminal arrest record and fill in all Dan Rather's info and have him arrested for selling cocaine. Then let us see if it is the seriousness of the charge.

When asked about his cocain arrest for selling, he can say but its a forgery.

[randog]

Dan Rather's acting like some Cigarette Executive being interviewed by Mike Wallace.

Ain't karma great?

[Mach9]

HOWEVER, they may have been too smart by half. They were to BE SEEN as official government documents. Intention plays a role in this, too. Otherwise, why all the forced military semi-regularities?

[citizen]

troll - signed up today - begone

There were NO manual typewriters in common use that could produce these memos, certainly not a hand-me-down NG unit.

[Dan Evans]

Perfectly centered address at top? It's because it's not typed. It's typeset. Slightly different font. Look at the numbers in the address and numbers in the memo closely

If it looks different, it's because the re-copying process has distorted the letters.

But if the address was typeset and the rest was done on a typewriter, how is it that the same letter, typed on Word, lines up perfectly. It would be a one in a billion shot that the paper was inserted into the typewriter so that the preprinted address exactly lined up with the text that would be typed. And then 31 years later a Microsoft Word document would exactly match it.

[plain talk]

It sounds like CBS will attempt a Clintonian maneuver and deny. What's different is that CBS is a business. They may think they get away with it but they will pay a hefty price. Barring other circumstances between now and election day, this item may be a defining moment in galvanizing the conservative base and voter turn-out and turning conservatives into broken-glass Republicans for this election.

[Damagro]

Has someone taken a look at Kerry military records to see if they were written in the same style?

If by style you mean forgeries, the Pentagon is looking at that now. Seems Lehman didn't sign the papers his signature was on. In that light, they are the exact same "style"

[Mach9]

Woooooooooodent that be loverlee.

[TaxRelief]

Dittos!
The Internet is becoming an acceptable alternative for up-to-date information for more people every year. Perhaps I'm wrong, but one of the main reasons so many people are turning from the "Media Wing of the Democratic Party", to news sources like FR, is because the process of discussion ultimately leads to greater ACCURACY.

I am an engineer. I was raised by an engineer. The scientific process does require challenging the hypotheses put forth by others. If these memos were put out there by a local weekly paper it would not be worth the effort, but discrediting the big guys is the best way to get people thinking about and questioning what they hear, rather than blindly accepting everything they are told.

---

That being said, discrediting the memos with bogus "facts" rather than good information, questions the credibility of FR. Under normal circumstances, the process of discussion on FR is what makes it one of the most accurate sources of news. However, when the whole group gets caught up in the excitement of "bash CBS" or "snag the DNC", it becomes more like a witch hunt or an emotion fest and less like a discussion amongst intelligent people.

---

For instance, many have argued that the Guard could not have afforded the machine that could do this. It's a weak argument at best. I call it the "far-fetched" argument. The "far-fetched" argument looks at the probability of an occurrence rather than the logical possibility of an occurrence. Probabilites are useful for determining which theory to test, but they are useless for ruling out 'modus operandi'. The typist could have used the machine anywhere. It could have been in his brother's business or the office of the guy who prints the newsletter. (You may notice that most liberal "expert" witnesses rely heavily on the "farfetched" argument.)

In another example of emotional v. logical argument, many have argued that the font did not exist. Another weak argument. It is much easier to prove something exists than something does not exist. This font did exist. I have posted the specs and the precise measurements of each letter from a 1968 technical internal IBM document.

The true Scientific Approach would be to determine the authenticity of the original documents through chemical and paper analysis. Handwriting analysis, while moderately subjective, is also helpful. Finding the colonel's fingerprints would be very damning indeed.

Accurately, rather than emotionally proving forgery, in this case would benefit the entire country. It is critical that the American people know if CBS or the rats are lying through their teeth, even if it does put "the burden of proof" on FR.

[Kackikat]

Now that would be really personalizing your memos, wonder how many Lt. Colonels have that kind of obsession with their memos...LOL