I've been biting my tongue, too, but for a different reason (I worked on the GDI/TrueType code for Win95). My reason: the scanned versions from CBS are just too low resolution to get anything meaningful out of them. They're faxed and faxes screw up things royally. For instance, I don't see the ABC spacing in the word "from" in the Aug 18, 1973 memo. There's definitely no kerning in the "CYA" from that memo because the A would be tucked in under the Y. CBS could clear up most of these issues if they would release high-resolution scans of the original documents.
Not only was it not invented until 1989, but it is patented. No one but a True-Type licencee (read Microsoft) can produce the CBS documents.
I'm not sure what you're saying here. Anyone who writes a Windows app can do ABC spacing and kerning. The ABC spacing is automatic, eg. GDI asks the font how far to move to the next character origin ( = A + B + C ). The only time an app needs the ABC widths is when it needs to deal with negative A or C values. Kerning is done at the application level and more involved because you need ask for kerning based on pairs of letters.
Do I think the docs are faked? Yes. I don't think a LTC in the TexANG would have a sophisticated typewriter nor the typing skill to manage the typography tricks used in the memo (multiple centered lines is the gotcha for me). These things are automatic now - we don't even think about it - and that tripped up the forger.
Did you read the whole article? Either the author is wrong, or you and I are miscommunicating.
Letter spacing will remain constant, even in a low-res scan. The fact that it is easy to overlay an MS Word document with the CBS document is nothing short of a miracle, considering that no other kind of document can meet this standard.
Here is the nuts and bolts of the argument: a kerned document will not match the CBS document. A document produced by an IBM Executive will not match the CBS document. A document produced by an IBM Composer will not match the CBS document. Only a document produced with a default TrueType font will match the CBS document.
TrueType was not available before 1981. The spacing in TrueType is neither kerned nor straight proportional. It is something of a kludge, a computationally easy enhancement to proportional spacing.
Any document that matches TrueType spacing could not have been printed prior to 1981 or 1982.
I'm sorr if I have not expressed myself clearly. I suspect that any program using TrueType, NS Word or brand X, could duplicate the CBS memos. I bet you could do it in Wordpad.