September 12, 2004

Hmmm.


Now look here:

Some rather abstruse mathematical arguments may be forthcoming about character widths, but I think this image makes a compelling case for Press Roman used on an IBM Selectric Composer.

According to my typography guru, the narrow W is a characteristic of typewriter fonts. You can see this in the first image, where the MS Times Roman W is distinctly wider than the W in Press Roman.

Yet the Ws line up very well when superimposed in the memo scan. Admittedly, this is not a scientifically precise demonstration. The scan is awful. After a certain point in reduction, similar typefaces begin looking identical. The width differences between the two Ws are probably not strong enough to survive the effects of scanning and reduction.

The shape of the 5, however is very distinctive, and it matches just about perfectly. In general, the letterforms of Press Roman are a good match for MS Times New Roman.

Until high resolution scans from the originals are made available, this is going to be difficult to refute on mathematical grounds. The mathematics don't apply because too many uncontrolled and unknown variables have entered.

Posted by jules_siegel at September 12, 2004 10:43 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I think you've found it. Take a look at the smallcase "i". It clearly has the curved underscoring just like the characters in the original document. Can you enlarge the "1" and compare it to the original like you did in your post on Sept. 10th?

Posted by: Robert McClelland at September 12, 2004 01:44 PM

http://www.flounder.com/bush.htm

Joseph M. Newcomer disagrees, in detail.

They're forgeries.

And how likely is it that there would be a top of the line, near typesetting quality, machine in a National Guard office being operated by a man whose wife said he can't type/

They're forgeries...so why did CBS not figure that out. Who gave them to CBS? Those are the questions which matter.

Posted by: Jay Currie at September 12, 2004 08:18 PM