Was IBM Selectric mfg 1968 available?

IBM ^ | 1968 | R. D. Matthews

[mentor2k]

I admit, I think these docs are phonies, but a friend ha sent me an article which clearly show that an IBM Selectric typewriter was available in 1968. It goes on to say that it equispaced the type and was able to place superscript and subscript fonts.

[mentor2k]

Can anyone help me dispute this? I would greatly appreciate anything anyone can offer.

[arkady_renko]

Well, why don't you post his article?

A_R

[MarkeyD]

It's been shown that that particular font was not available on a typewriter. Also, those machines were $20K.

[Peach]

Um, there are only about a hundred articles on FR today about this matter.

For instance, one of the men who signed a memo retired a year before he signed the memo.

ABC News reported last night and again today that they consulted over a half dozen forgery experts who said the documents were almost definitely typed on a computer.

Killian's wife and son have said he didn't type, didn't write or talk that way, didn't keep notes, and think the documents are forgeries. Did I mention the signature looks suspicious to everyone at ABC and other news agencies who have seen the documents?

[RockinRight]

There's no way a National Guard unit would have a $20,000 typewriter. Only someone like a newspaper publisher would have had one.

[Shortwave]

Your friend is wrong. Any type of machine that could space the way that document was presented would have costs hundreds of thousands of dollars and was only used in high-end printing . No typewriter of the day, when the letter was typed, could have been that perfect. Like you said, it's a hoax. Garbage and I hope Dan Rather loses his job and I hope CBS ends up in the toilet.

[willie1]

IBM or no, I understand that the signature is in doubt as well.

[Steven W.]

yes, but not proportional fonts nor ligatures (where small lower case 'i's, for example, are close to their adjoining letters) nor dual 'apostrophes' nor designed for 8-1/2 x 11 size paper, etc.. Such a machine capable of all these properites, to generate documents which are all exact duplicate mirror images of that which is printed from MS Word using default parameters, odds are 10 million to one.

[Arizona Carolyn]

All I can add to this is these were VERY expensive (in 1968 dollars) and in the very large company I worked for only the secretaries up in the executive offices had these tyopewriters. While I can't prove it, I seriously doubt the National Guard would have them just sitting around for general use. They were complicated, state of the art, machines and Killians wife said last night on Nightline that he didn't type.

[mnehring]

We also have the Guard coming out today and saying the PO Box on the address bar was never an address for the.
Plus the miracle of MS Word working back then (perfect space comparison)...

[KellyAdmirer]

Well, Killian no doubt kept his high-end IBM typewriter with the advanced fonts and the other advanced gizmos only used by high-end printing shops of the time out in the Batcave, where his wife and son would never find them, along with his flying car and his private submarine.

[BufordP]

IBM Selectric mfg 1961

[Mr Ramsbotham]

These documents weren't done on a Selectric. They were done on a device that was capable of proportional spacing and also capable of doing the calculations necessary to center proportionally-spaced type. The pseudo-typesetting systems available at the time were mechanical devices that required quite a bit of operator input. They didn't have the means to do computations.

[FlatLandBeer]

The best way to check the validity of the documents is to compare them to other documents prepared at the same time in that unit for that Lt.Col. Also i was in a Navel Reserve unit that had only a limited number of typewriters of various manufacures and types. So you should see some variable in the documents.

[mentor2k]

Thanks, I did link it in the original. But heres a link to the pdf detail: IBM Selectric 1968 pdf file

[mlbford2]

The Selectric did not use that font. Plus other caracters were not the same on Selectra, but are IDENTICAL to MS Word. Plus there are 32 strange anomolies other than font and spacing that prove these docs are forgeries.

[Cboldt]

IBM typewriter with proportional spacing was introduced in 1941.

IBM announces the Electromatic Model 04 electric typewriter, featuring the revolutionary concept of proportional spacing. By assigning varied rather than uniform spacing to different sized characters, the Type 4 recreated the appearance of a printed page, an effect that was further enhanced by a typewriter ribbon innovation that produced clearer, sharper words on the page. The proportional spacing feature became a staple of the IBM Executive series typewriters.

http://www-1.ibm.com/ibm/history/history/year_1941.html

On the Executive, you could optionally have removable type-bars. This is somewhat like later Smith-Corona portables which have removable type-slugs on the two outermost type-bars, with corresponding changeable keytop caps. In this case, though, it's the whole type-bar.

http://www.geocities.com/wbd641/TypeManuals2.html

The IBM Selectric does NOT have proportional spacing. The IBM Selectric-Composer does, but it was a big-bucks beast, complex to use, and would only appear in a type-setting environment, never in an administrative office.

[kellynla]

"Sorry, but due to excessive hits, this page is temporarily out of service.

Please check back after the election.

For those who want my opinion...the documents appear to be done in Word, and then copied repeatedly to make them "fuzzy". They use features that were not available on office typewriters the 1970s, specifically the combination of proportional spacing with superscript font. The IBM Executive has proportional spacing, but used fixed type bars. The Selectric has changeable type elements, but fixed spacing (some models could be selected at 10 or 12 pitch, but that's all). The Selectric Composer was not an office typewriter, but apparently did use proportional spacing. These were very expensive machines, used by printing offices, not administrative offices."

This info was taken from the IBM Museum website



There is more info on the link
http://www.selectric.org/selectric/index.html

[N. Theknow]

From MS Word 72