The first IBM "Executive" Typewriter with proportional spacing, the Model A, was placed on the market shortly after World War II. . .
And I worked on one of their selectric / composer units in about 1972(it was an older unit) or so that produced near typeset quality, including kerning. It worked by your keying in the text, which was recorded on a mag card, and then played back with corrections and letterspacing and kerning applied. At least, that's how I remember it. Whether the Hawaii DOH had one of these units we don't know.
Now, that doesn't mean that the Regime hasn't produced a fraud here, only that the argument that typewriters did not kern is not accurate.
Now, that doesn't mean that the Regime hasn't produced a fraud here, only that the argument that typewriters did not kern is not accurate.
These units were large, bulky, slow machines designed for typesetting, not typewriting. They were totally unsuitable for use with a form.
Proportional spacing, available on some typewriters, is not kerning, it merely makes the fixed spacing of letters proportionate to their width.
“And I worked on one of their selectric / composer units in about 1972(it was an older unit) or so that produced near typeset quality, including kerning. It worked by your keying in the text, which was recorded on a mag card, and then played back with corrections and letterspacing and kerning applied.”
The downside of using that argument to explain the kerning is that it then invalidates the other explanations about the vertical misalignments of letters being due to sloppy shift-key usage. If the text is recorded on a mag card, formatted, then typed automatically, there would be no misalignments. They can’t have it both ways.