Here’s an email forwarded to me by Dr. Joseph Newcomer, from Dean Speir of TheGunZone.com. Mr. Speir has been in the graphic arts field for 33 years, and owned an IBM Selectric Composer—the high-end, expensive typewriter some have tried to argue may have created the CBS Killian memos. Speir’s verdict: no way.

In point of fact, the IBM Selectric Composer did nothing automatically. It was an expensive ($3k, circa 1973), labor intensive device that had the ability to create fully justified, proportionally-spaced type, but only after the operator generated each individual line of type twice, stopping to take a value reading and make a setting between the first and second typings. I can assure you that, as a non-typist and a mildly anal Virgo, the bloom faded from the romance of having a “justified look” rather quickly. About the only reason for having a “Composer” really was for the proportionally-spaced “Univers” and “Times” fonts available… they looked a helluva lot more professional than the “Prestige Elite 12” or “Letter Gothic 12” styles available with the garden-variety IBM Selectric Typewriters of the day.

Yes, one could “kern” with the Composer, as it back-spaced in increments of “1,” so a more pleasing appearance could be obtained with the word “Word” by manually back-spacing one unit before typing the lower-case “o” after the capital “W” in the bold face, or back-spacing two units if using the standard weight. It was a matter of preference with me in the sans-serif faces, but obligatory with the serif styles.

(On the Selectric Typewriter, as I recollect… this was over 30 years ago… one could inartfully faux kern but it was definitely a two-handed operation, requiring forcing back a chromed lever while keying the letter. It was awkward, and the result was not very pleasing to the eye.)

Oddly, I have no recollection of ordinal ligatures on the $35 Composer type balls, but a friend tells me that they were available as a special order item.

One final item which seems to have been omitted from your extensive brief, given the relative costs of the Selectric Composer at between five and seven times that of the Selectric Typewriter, even with the military’s well-identified penchant for procuring $87 screwdrivers and $329 “seats, toilet,” the presence of a Selectric Composer on a National Guard clerk’s desk would be dubious in the extreme, especially given the ubiquity of the Selectric Typewriter in that capacity.

For the record, I have 33 years in the graphic arts, having started out co-publishing a bi-weekly newspaper with a Selectric Typewriter (1971-1973) before striking out on my own with a Selectric Composer… it was, along with the A-M Varityper, the heyday of the “cold type revolution.” I used it as my primary setting device until late ‘79 when I held my nose and plunged into a CompuGraphic 7500.