[IP] Bush memo controversey
..... Forwarded Message .......
From: Irwin Lazar <ilazar@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "dave@xxxxxxxxxx" <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 10 Sep 2004 16:38:15 -0400
Subj: Bush memo controversey
Dave,
Kos at http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/9/10/34914/1603 has posted a pretty
thorough analysis of the memo controversy. He notes among other things that
the uppercase th was indeed available on typewriters of the time, and that
many errors have been made by those looking to discredit the memos.
irwin
--------
by Hunter
Fri Sep 10th, 2004 at 15:37:04 GMT
(From the diaries -- kos)
Against my own better judgment, but because I believe that the more rapidly
charges are countered, the better, I spend a goodly portion of the last day
researching -- shudder -- typewriters of the '60s and '70s. As everyone on the
planet no doubt knows by now, the hard-right of the freeper contingent --
specifically, LittleGreenFootballs, a site which frequently is cited for
eliminationist rhetoric and veiled racism, and PowerLine, a site linked to with
admiration by such luminaries as Michelle Malkin and Hugh Hewitt -- discovered
that if you used the same typeface, you could make documents that looked almost
-- but not exactly -- like the TANG documents discovered by CBS News. This
qualifies as big news, of course, so from those two sites, the story has spread
into the mainstream media through the usual channels, most notably Drudge, NRO,
etc.
I do not believe there is any truly "new" information here, but I hope to
condense it in one easy-to-digest reference.
So here are some point-by-point findings re: the "forgeries".
Diaries :: Hunter's diary ::
First Claim (LittleGreenFootballs): "The documents can be recreated in
Microsoft Word".
What the LGFer did to "prove" this was to type a Microsoft Word document in
Times New Roman font, and overlay it with the original document. As he says:
Notice that the date lines up perfectly, all the line breaks are in the same
places, all letters line up with the same letters above and below, and the
kerning is exactly the same. And I did not change a single thing from Word's
defaults; margins, type size, tab stops, etc. are all using the default
settings.
We're going to make this simple.
First, of course, in order to do this, he first had to reduce the document so
that the margins were the same, since the original PDF distributed by CBS is
quite a bit larger. Then he superimposed the two documents, such that the
margins on all sides lined up.
What he then discovered is that Times New Roman typeface is, when viewed on a
computer monitor, really, really similar to Times New Roman typeface. Or
rather, really really similar to a typeface that is similar to Times New Roman
typeface.
Um, OK then.
You see, a "typeface" doesn't just consist of the shape of the letters. It
also is a set of rules about the size of the letters in different point sizes,
the width of those letters, and the spacing between them. These are all
designed in as part of the font, by the designer. Since Microsoft Word was
designed to include popular and very-long-used typefaces, it is hardly a
surprise that those typefaces, in Microsoft Word, would look similar to, er,
themselves, on a typewriter or other publishing device. That's the point of
typefaces; to have a uniform look across all publishing devices. To look the
same. You could use the same typeface in, for example, OpenOffice, and if it's
the same font, surprise-surprise, it will look the same.
So kudos on discovering fonts, freeper guy.
Next, however: do they really match up? Well, no. They don't.
If you shrink each document to be approximately 400-500 pixels across, they do
indeed look strikingly similar. But that is because you are compressing the
information they contain to 400-500 pixels across. At that size, subtle
differences in typeface or letter placement simply cannot be detected; the
"pixels" are too big. If you compare the two documents at a larger size, the
differences between them are much more striking.
For instance: In the original CBS document, some letters "float" above or
below the baseline. For example, in the original document, lowercase 'e' is
very frequently -- but not always -- above the baseline. Look at the word
"interference", or even "me". Typewriters do this; computers don't. Granted,
if you are comparing a lowercase 'e' that is only 10 or 12 pixels high with
another lowercase 'e' that is only 10 or 12 pixels high, you're not going to
see such subtleties. That doesn't prove the differences aren't there; it just
proves you're an idiot, for making them each 12 pixels high and then saying
"see, they almost match!"
"This typeface -- Times New Roman -- didn't exist in the early 1970s."
There are several problems with this theory. First, Times New Roman, as a
typeface, was invented in 1931. Second, typewriters were indeed available with
Times New Roman typefaces.
And third, this isn't Times New Roman, at least not the Microsoft version.
It's close. But it's not a match.
For example, the '8' characters are decidedly different. The '4's, as viewable
on other memos, are completely different; one has an open top, the other is
closed.
So yes, we have proven that two typefaces that look similar to each other are
indeed, um, similar. At least when each document is shrunk to 400-500 pixels
wide... and you ignore some of the characters.
"Documents back then didn't have superscripted 'th' characters"
That one was easy. Yes, many typewriter models had shift-combinations to
create 'th', 'nd', and 'rd'. This is most easily proven by looking at
known-good documents in the Bush records, which indeed have superscripted 'th'
characters interspersed throughout.
"This document uses proportional spacing, which didn't exist in the early
1970s."
Turns out, it did. The IBM Executive electric typewriter was manufactured in
four models, A, B, C, and D, starting in 1947, and featured proportional
spacing. An example of its output is here. It was an extremely popular model,
and was marketed to government agencies.
"OK, fine, but no single machine had proportional spacing, 'th' characters, and
a font like that one."
No, again. The IBM Executive is probably the most likely candidate for this
particular memo. There is some confusion about this, so to clear up: the IBM
Selectric, while very popular, did not have proportional spacing. The
Selectric Composer, introduced in 1966, did, and in fact could easily have
produced these memos, but it was a very expensive machine, and not likely to be
used for light typing duties. The proportional-spacing Executive, on the other
hand, had been produced in various configurations since the 1940's, and was
quite popular.
(Note: However, it is not immediately clear that the Selectrics and Selectric
IIs could not in fact emulate "proportional" spacing. There is skepticism in
some circles that these memos really show "proportional" spacing. Looking at
the blowups, it appears pretty obvious to me that there is, but still
researching.)
Did they have a font that looked like Times New Roman? Unclear; they
apparently were manufactured in a range of configurations, and with different
available typefaces. Note that these were not "typeball" machines, like the
Selectrics; they had a normal row of keys. But it is worth noting that IBM had
what we will call a "close" relationship with Times New Roman:
Courier was originally designed in 1956 by Howard Kettler for the revolutionary
"golfball" typing head technology IBM was then developing for its electric
typewriters. (The first typewriter to use the technology was the IBM Selectric
Typewriter that debuted in 1961.) Adrian Frutiger had nothing to do with the
design, though IBM hired him in the late 1960s to design a version of his
Univers typeface for the Selectric. In the 1960s and 1970s Courier became a
mainstay in offices. Consequently, when Apple introduced its first Macintosh
computer in 1984 it anachronistically included Courier among its core fonts. In
the early 1990s Microsoft, locked in a font format battle with Adobe, hired
Monotype Typography to design a series of core fonts for Windows 3.1, many of
which were intended to mirror those in the Apple core font group. Thus, New
Courier--lighter and crisper than Courier--was born. (In alphabetized screen
menus font names are often rearranged for easier access so now we have Courier
New MT in which the MT stands for Monotype Typography.)
Courier's vanquisher was Times New Roman, designed in 1931 by Stanley Morison,
Typographical Advisor to the Monotype Corporation, with the assistance of
draughtsman Victor Lardent. The Times of London first used it the following
year. Linotype and Intertype quickly licensed the design, changing its name for
their marketing purposes to Times Roman. Times Roman became an original core
font for Apple in the 1980s and Times New Roman MT became one for Windows in
the 1990s. (Ironically, at the same time IBM invited Frutiger to adapt Univers
for the Selectric Typewriter, they asked Morison to do the same with Times New
Roman.)
So, as you can see, both IBM and Microsoft specifically obtained the typeface
"Times New Roman" from the designers of that font; neither was the creator of
it. And, as we said before, typeface includes not just the "shape" of the
letters, but the size and spacing between those letters.
One of the differences between the Times New Roman as implemented on the IBM
machines, as opposed to Microsoft Word? The IBM machines apparently had the
alternative '4' character that matched these memos, while Microsoft Word's TNR
does not.
Oops.
Now, would the 111th Fighter Interceptor Squadron have extravagantly purchased
typewriters that contained the th superscript key? Would the military want or
require typewriters with the 'th', 'nd', and 'rd' characters? Hmm. Ponder,
Ponder. What would the 111th need with a th character... I'll leave that to
the enterprising among you to deduce.
This is not the final word on this, and it is certainly possible that any
documents are forgeries. But the principle argument of the freepers -- that it
would be impossible for a TANG office in 1972 to produce documents that look
like these -- is simply false. Within a few days, however, we should know for
sure either way; these typewriters still have a following, and type samples
should be forthcoming.
Update [2004-9-10 4:26:25 by Hunter]: Also see kj's diary just after this one,
for evidence on the IBM Selectric Composer, first marketed in 1966. This
machine definitively had all the features necessary to produce these documents.
Because it was apparently very expensive and difficult to use, the argument is
that a TANG office would never have had one. Unclear. Nonetheless, it strikes
down the theory that a 60s-70s era machine could not have produced these docs.
Update [2004-9-10 5:48:19 by Hunter]: Here is an excellent article explaining
the recent history of Times New Roman in particular. Note that Adobe,
Microsoft, Apple, and other firms redesigned their "Times [New] Roman"
typefaces in the 80s-90s specifically to more accurately match the original
design of Times New Roman:
When Microsoft produced its version of Times New Roman, licensed from
Monotype, in TrueType format, and when Apple produced its version of Times
Roman, licensed from Linotype, in TrueType format, the subtle competition took
on a new aspect, because both Microsoft and Apple expended a great deal of time
and effort to make the TrueType versions as good as, or better than, the
PostScript version. During the same period, Adobe released ATM along with
upgraded versions of its core set of fonts, for improved rasterization on
screen. Also, firms like Imagen, now part of QMS, and Sun developed rival font
scaling technologies, and labored to make sure that their renderings of Times,
licensed from Linotype in both cases, were equal to those of their competitors.
Hence, the perceived quality of the Times design became a litmus for the
quality of several font formats. Never before, and probably never again, would
the precise placement of pixels in the serifs or 's' curves etc. of Times Roman
occupy the attention of so many engineers and computer scientists. It was
perhaps the supreme era of the Digital Fontologist.
So as you can see, it has indeed been a primary design goal of Microsoft and
other firms to make their Times New Roman font match the original 1930's
typeface design as closely as possible.
Update [2004-9-10 6:47:49 by Hunter]: Here is an actual manual for an IBM
Selectric Composer, circa 1966, itself created using a Composer.
Update [2004-9-10 14:26:41 by Hunter]: This is from a commenter at Kevin Drum's
Washington Monthly site:
Kevin, I worked in the IBM Office Products Division field service area fixing
typewriters in NYC for over 13 years in the 70s. I can tell you that the Model
D can produce those documents, not only did it do proportional spacing, you
could order any font that IBM produced AND order keys that had the aftmentioned
superscripted "th." Also you could order the platen, thats the roller that
grabs the paper, in a 54 tooth configuration that produced space, space and a
half and double spacing on the line indexing, this BTW was popular in legal
offices. The Model D had to be ordered from a IBM salesmen and was not
something that was a off the shelf item, typical delivery time were 4-6 weeks.
Also, typewriter keys were changed in the field all the time, its not that hard
to do. I wish I had saved my service and parts replacement manuals to backup
this claim but I'm guessing a call to IBM with a request for a copy of their
font and parts replacement manuals would put this to rest ASAP. Posted by:
BillG NYC on September 10, 2004 at 12:24 PM | PERMALINK
FYI, but I have found nothing that contradicts this information. It would
appear you could order the humble IBM Executive with a wide variety of
typestyles and characters, especially if you were a large, important client.
-------------------------------------
You are subscribed as roessler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To manage your subscription, go to
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip
Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/