[narby]

Here's what you do: 1. Type the lines of the heading you want centered on a separate sheet. Since this is usually going to go at the top of the page, you can do it before beginning to type your document. 2.Measure the width of each line to be centered, and note it. 3. Make a light pencil mark at the center of your paper, then roll the paper through. Center the mark at the "V" in the shield that covers the platen. 4. Move the carriage half the distance of the first line's measurement to the left, and begin typing. Repeat for other centered lines. Typists did this all the time. I know I did. But...you wouldn't go to the trouble for a casual memo.

Sure, I did that too. But the problem is, it's PERFECT! We're talking right down to the fraction of a space. It has to be within .020 or .030 of an inch for the letters to match up as perfectly as they do. No way can somebody be that perfect on three different lines.

And the odds that the entire page perfectly matches MS Word default spacing, word wrap, type face, all the rest. No way.

[MineralMan]

"Sure, I did that too. But the problem is, it's PERFECT! We're talking right down to the fraction of a space. It has to be within .020 or .030 of an inch for the letters to match up as perfectly as they do. No way can somebody be that perfect on three different lines."

Not on the IBM Executive. Remember, it has spaces that divide each space into three. That's how it does the proportional spacing. There are two spacebars on the machine. One moves the spacebar the width of the letter "i". The other moves it the width of the letter "n".

Backspacing works the same way. You'd be amazed at how small a movement you get with that typewriter.

How do I know? I used one to typeset a small magazine for about three years. You can do it just fine. I even had a whole set of alternative type bars with special characters, and used them all the time. Among them were the ordinal number endings as superscripts, like "th"

What I'm saying is that this document COULD have been prepared with an IBM Executive of the day. It WASN'T, because it would have taken even me an hour or so to do it, and I'd have done a much better job than the sloppy work done in this memo.

Nobody would do it. But...and I stress this...it COULD have been done, and CBS may be going to show you. You have no idea of the capabilities of that particular typewriter unless you have used it. And the military DID have them.

It's still a forgery, but it's not that simple.

[AaronInCarolina]

And the odds that the entire page perfectly matches MS Word default spacing, word wrap, type face, all the rest. No way.

This, I think, is the most compelling evidence of fakery. It is nearly statistically impossible to have words be overlaid identically with proportional fonts. While it may be true that proportional fonts may have been available on a small set of typewriters of that era, its nearly impossible that it would have produced the same "typo-metrics" or word "finger-print" as Microsoft Word today, or of any typewriter other than the exact same typewriter using the exact same print head. Its even highly unlikely that you could get MS Word to produce a word "finger-print" match with another modern word-processor (such as Word Perfect) even if both used the same proportional font. There are just too many points that match.