More evidence that it couldn't have been done on an
IBM Selectric Composer......
Here's just a sample from the article that sealed it for me.....
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What's left? Something I didn't even think to ask about: the centered type.
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Another point that is very suspicious is the centered heading. This is a snap to do with fixed spacing (like courier), but the text is centered using proportional spaced text, which means that the typist had to carefully measure the text prior to typing to calculate its exact center point. Typing a superscript, with all its steps, is simple compared to centering text proportionally without digital electronics.
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This point was so important to Gerry that he went out of his way to mention it to me again later in the day:<font color=green>
centering type is hard on the Selectric Composer.<font color=black> Two of the memos, May 4 and August 1, 1972, feature a three-line centered head. Each of those lines of type had to be centered by measuring it carefully, doing some math, then advancing the carrier to just the right point on the page. The margin for error would be pretty wide because type can be off by a few points in either direction and still look pretty well centered. It wouldn't be objectionable unless you went looking for it. So it wasn't necessary for Lt. Col. Killian — or his typist — to be millimeter-precise.
And yet … he was.<font size=3>
shapeofdays.typepad.com
<font size=4>Two letterheads typed three months apart can be superimposed on each other so perfectly that no difference at all can be seen. It's the same deal as before: the red in front was superimposed over the black behind it. You just can't see the black copy because the red copy is perfectly aligned with it. These letterheads weren't centered to within a couple of points of each other. They were centered exactly the same. Three months apart.
Remarkable.
Can we draw any conclusions from this? Well, there's always room for doubt, no matter how slim, no matter how slight. But in my opinion … yes. Based on the significant differences in letterspacing between the Composer font and the font used in the memos, the iffy nature of the superscript "th," and the unbelievable coincidence of the precisely centered headlines, I'm ready to say that the IBM Selectric Composer was not used to produce these memos.
Update: Gerry, who I swear is going to have his own blog before the end of this, had a suggestion.
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Something that I think would be a good test for your website may be to reproduce the centered heading using MS Word and Times New Roman. If you can produce centered text that matches identically to the letterhead, it is, in my opinion, a true hoax. The reason is, because even if they were able to center text with a typesetting machine such as the composer, a PC (and good word processor), will center the text even more precisely, not at the "point" level, but rather on the twip level (1/1440th of an inch or 1/20th of a point).<font color=black><font size=3>
I live to please. Behold:
shapeofdays.typepad.com
<font size=4>This is the composite image from above with the new stuff on top. The bottom layer is the first original memo headers in black. Above that is the second original memo headers in red ink. And on top of that in black is the header I created just now using Microsoft Word's default settings and clicking the "center" button. There's a little slippage because the original scans are not perfectly horizontal while the overlay I put on top is. But beyond that … looks like a dead-on match to me.
What are the odds?<font size=3>
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