IBM Executive typewriter with proportional spacing - going back to 1941

[LTR]

I glossed over quite a few threads last night about the so-called 'forgeries', and saw a good debunking on Atrios, that I thought deserved it's own thread:

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004/09/executive.html



I'm not going to spend the day arguing about fonts and typewriters, because the whole thing is so goddamn stupid, but what kind of "experts" in this are are unable to do a google search in 5 seconds and discover that IBM had been marketing a basic typewriter with proportional spacing since the late 1940s 1941 (thanks Melic!).

Here's the IBM link:

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

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.

And here's a manual (in Adobe) of typefaces and fonts:

http://www.ibmcomposer.org/docs/Selectric%20Composer%20Operations%20Manual.pdf

[cthrumatrix]

1. no need for facts to get in the way .... the media is in full pump mode

[Walt Starr]

2. Kick

Oh wow, a typewriter that did proportional spacing more than 30 fucking years before the documents in question were typed. Who woulda thunk that they would have done anything more than carve documents on stone tablets before the PC.

[liberal_in_GA]

3. So doesn't this deserve

a media blast? :wtf:

[The Magistrate]

5. It Certainly Does, Ma'am

"LET'S GO GET THOSE BUSH BASTARDS!"

[veteran_for_peace]

4. Can it do Superscript

That is the key question.

[Florida_Geek]

6. The 1966 IBM could

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=2333601&mesg_id=2333601

[veteran_for_peace]

11. I couldn't find where it says that it could do superscript

This is the key to proving that this is a possible typewriter.

[ItsMyParty]

7. As I just posted on another thread

I used the IBM Executive typewriter from 1963-1966. I was the secretary for the Exec. VP of a big utility company in the midwest. We had the new IBM Executives. This is how they worked differently from other typewriters. With a regular typewriter (remember how you would backspace and use correction tape to remove things)if you were backspacing to remove the word "We", you would just hit the backspace key twice with a regular typewriter; but with the Executives each letter had a different value to it. Thus the "We" would be like hit the backspace key once for the 'e' and three times for the "W" because of the width of the letter was so much bigger and assigned a larger space (I don't remember exactly how many spaces were assigned for each letter but, for instance, letters like "l" or "i" had only one unit (one space)as compared to like 3 or more spaces for "W" or "M". I'm trying to remember if we also had heads (the printing device was a ball)that could snap on and off. I know that somewhere within the 60's I used typewriters that had the snap on and off heads for different fonts.

[NewYorkerfromMass]

8. Here's the definitive post

Geezum this came from a TYPEWRITER!!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=782122&mesg_id=782150&page=

[cthrumatrix]

9. well blast it to the media ....shame the freepers and get ready for coke

story to hit

[RobertSeattle]

10. America --- what a country

Who would have thought at the beginning of this week that by Friday we'd be obsessing on IMB Selectric Typewriters?

[NJmaverick]

12. Here is the font that made that memo IBM electric

[Terran]

13. That ad is clearly not from 1941

But it's still probably older than 1968, so it does make the forgery story very unlikely.

[LTR]

14. I heard the ad came from 1958

IBM began proportional spacing typewriters in 1941.