A friend forwarded
this, from the right-wing CNS News Service:
Three independent typography experts told CNSNews.com they were suspicious of the documents from 1972 and 1973 because they were typed using a proportional font, not common at that time, and they used a superscript font feature found in today's Microsoft Word program. ...
The typography experts couldn't pinpoint the exact font used in the documents. They also couldn't definitively conclude that the documents were either forged using a current computer program or were the work of a high-end typewriter or word processor in the early 1970s.
But the use of the superscript "th" in one document - "111th F.L.S" - gave each expert pause. They said that is an automatic feature found in current versions of Microsoft Word, and it's not something that was even possible more than 30 years ago.
But buried at the end of the article is this:
"The only thing it could be, possibly, is an IBM golf ball typewriter, which came out around the early to middle 1970s," Haley said. "Those did have proportional fonts on them. But they weren't widely used."
Actually, he's off by 10-15 years, according to the
Production First Software Encyclopedia of Typography and Electronic Communication:
The first typewriter using a moving replaceable font ball element (the Selectric) was introduced in 1961 by IBM. ... [T]he Selectric Composer machine [offered] proportional spaced fonts, automatic line justification, and adjustable letter and word spacing....
So one of claims made by the "experts" quoted in this article is bogus. What about their claim regarding superscript "th" characters? I seem to recall seeing this on typewriters from the '70s, but am not positive. Anyone out there have evidence of a superscript "th" character on an early '70s typewriter -- especially a Selectric-style "golf ball" unit?