$10,000 Part Two: The IBM Selectric
First of all, thanks to the five people who have each pledged $100 a piece in addition to my $10,000 offering. Therefore, anyone who can reasonably recreate the CBS memos on equipment available in early 1972 will be receiving at least $10,500.
Two people so far have attempted to claim the prize on the basis that the IBM Selectric Composer was a proportionally-spaced font typewriter available at that time (though not yet in wide use). In fact, even CBS News is apparently going on the air tonight with "evidence" that this model and several other typewriters of the day could even do super- or sub-script characters.
Yet the IBM Selectric Composer's own manual makes superscripting of the type seen in the CBS forgeries impossible. This section is taken from page 51 of the manual (page 56 of the .pdf):
As you can see, the super- and sub-scripting available to these typewriters only involved the raising or lowering of letters; it obviously couldn't make them any smaller, since the wheel was fixed-point.
To repeat: a typewriter could only raise or lower letters -- it couldn't make them smaller or larger because the wheel used fixed-size characters. The CBS forgeries contain Microsoft-style mini-font superscripts, which could not be done even on a typewriter with superscripting ability.
The only way a fixed-type machine could have made the Microsoftian-style superscripts is if there was a special key for "st" or "th" -- and, according to the IBM manual's page 167 (page 172 of the .pdf), there were no such special character unit values.
For CBS to say "but typewriters in the day could do superscripts" ignores the whole point of why the superscripting in the forged documents are so persuasive -- the letters on a fixed-size metal wheel can't just get smaller or larger. They must know this, and therefore their continued attempts to deceive the American public are even more sickening.
The $10,000 offer stands.
Two people so far have attempted to claim the prize on the basis that the IBM Selectric Composer was a proportionally-spaced font typewriter available at that time (though not yet in wide use). In fact, even CBS News is apparently going on the air tonight with "evidence" that this model and several other typewriters of the day could even do super- or sub-script characters.
Yet the IBM Selectric Composer's own manual makes superscripting of the type seen in the CBS forgeries impossible. This section is taken from page 51 of the manual (page 56 of the .pdf):
As you can see, the super- and sub-scripting available to these typewriters only involved the raising or lowering of letters; it obviously couldn't make them any smaller, since the wheel was fixed-point.
To repeat: a typewriter could only raise or lower letters -- it couldn't make them smaller or larger because the wheel used fixed-size characters. The CBS forgeries contain Microsoft-style mini-font superscripts, which could not be done even on a typewriter with superscripting ability.
The only way a fixed-type machine could have made the Microsoftian-style superscripts is if there was a special key for "st" or "th" -- and, according to the IBM manual's page 167 (page 172 of the .pdf), there were no such special character unit values.
For CBS to say "but typewriters in the day could do superscripts" ignores the whole point of why the superscripting in the forged documents are so persuasive -- the letters on a fixed-size metal wheel can't just get smaller or larger. They must know this, and therefore their continued attempts to deceive the American public are even more sickening.
The $10,000 offer stands.
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