[rocklobster11]

In the very early 70's, the military's state-of-the-art word processing was done on IBM MTST Composers. They used a monospaced font printing format but used the same "font balls" (about the size of ping-pong balls and had changeable font types) as the IBM selectric typewriters.

could they do

superscript

like in the may 4 memo?

[demlosers]

Good catch.

[fat city]

They could do different font sizes (within the limits of the ball size-- which was uniform for all fonts. However on rethinking that old system, I believe the Composer could do proprtional word spacing (for clean margins) but that would be for formal printing only due to the complex coding (at least compared to typing) and no one would use it for "memos" or private notes. We used it for important documents going into print.

[Mike Darancette]

could they do superscript

Some memos have it some don't --- Different typewriters or typists.

[Chaguito]

Holy Smoking Gun! Somebody slipped up by allowing the word processor to automatically print a superscript. No superscript in the header. How very sweet!

[Chummy]

could they do

superscript

like in the may 4 memo?



Nope. Not only that, rocklobster11, but if you look carefully the "th" is a single-strike character, meaning it was created with a special character key, and no such key existed on typewriters of the day. Also note "th" is in the print line in some instances, in superscript in others, and in mixed use on yet a third document.

What makes this even more laughable is that typewriter fonts are readily available in .ttf and the forgeries could have easily been made to look much more authentic than these rip-offs.

[sittnick]

While I doubt anyone would have changed balls to make superscript. The only superscript character I see is "th." I believe that even then it would be conceivable that there is existed a ball with a "th" in there, in the same way that some typewriters had commonly used fractions like 1/2 built-in.

I could even go along with the possibility of a proportional spaced typewriter.

However, why is the "th" sometimes scripted and sometimes not? The address centering, done perfectly everytime on a typewriter that certainly had no built-in memory?

Oddly, it appears that the typist used the letter "l" for the number "1." That is how many old typewriters worked. However, I imagine that a typewriter that has a superscripted "th" on it would also have a numeral "1." Moreover, any body who took the bother to get a ball with a "th" and used it from time to time, would also hit the "1" key, even if he were trained on a "1"-less Underwood.

Oooooh, loookeee here, I just founded some of Hitler's Diaries! Do you think CBS will buy them from me?